Contested Plains

[Blake]

This book has so much to offer, especially to an environmental historian like me. Key to understanding this text is the difference between "perceived" environments and "actual" environments. Basically, people place cultural notions on things that may or may not actually exist in said environment. The classic example of this that all of us are now familiar with is the notion of the Great American Desert.

West focuses on two sub-cultures generated by introductions to the environment. The first is the advent of horse culture on the Plains and the other is the emergence of gold-culture. These two cultures come into contact and conflict with the discovery of Gold at Pikes Peak. One of West's sub-arguments is that the Gold Rush had a significant role in killing the myth of the Great American Desert as many came through to see the land and its possibilities.

Another key component of West's work is delineating the "actual" environment of the plains. To do this, West adopts the longue duree approach. In so doing, West contends that many of the events of the plains in the 1850s are not necessarily new or all that innovative. Instead, it is new information being plugged into an ancient system. The paths taken by argonauts were the same used for millenia of trade. Horses did not render Indigenous people into new beings, but rather, horses were plugged into already existing folkways and gave them greater efficiency in many respects.

West does a great job of recognizing the agency of those he writes about. The Cheyenne and the Goldseekers devise various schemes to meet their needs, but sometimes those schemes backfire. Overall, this text is essential for understanding how the plains were viewed.

[Thomas]

The value you perceive in the work (as it relates to your own) is rather striking. I think I am in the process of introducing time-lapse into the historical perceptions. I just wrote a section of the paper for Norway arguing that perhaps Baron von Richthofen was not really duplicitous when he promoted the dry, open winters of Montana as perfect for cattle culture. He was just late to the party and relying on dated informants. That climatic regime already has passed. The cattle kings suffered disaster because they assumed the environment was as it had been.

[Blake]

That makes a lot of sense! To use West's terms, the actual environment changes before the perceived environment changes. I suppose this could actually pose a real test to Cronon's mutual determinism. If people are acting on a reality that is not there but one they wish were there or one that once was therethen they can't be influenced as much by the present environment as much as they are by a past environment or a wished environment. That doesn't exclude the present environment, but it does limit its influence.

The same might be true of the possiblism of Sweeney and Flores. Instead of a straightforward notion that the environment determines what is possible and human choice then takes the reigns to change what is possible, there would be sort of a flexible possiblism. The environment would set what was possible, what is possible, and what will be possible. I suppose an illustration might look something like a farmer in Montana standing on their porch was once able to plant his crop (last spring), he is no longer able to plant that same crop in November, because the environment does not provide that possibility, however, that crop will be able to be planted in the future. Obviously this is a microexample of this kind of thing.

That might not be where your taking the time-lapse concept. But I like it either way.