The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West

by Stewart L. Udall

Book Overview

"...an impressive new book... [The Forgotten Founders] is a gem that encompasses virtually every aspect of the development of our region." -ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS "[Udall] offers a convincing argument... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559638931
• ISBN13: 9781559638937
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Island Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Real Story was Work

The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking The History Of The Old West By Steve Udall. Midway through The Forgotten Founders appears a sentence that aptly summarizes the the work as a whole: "The real story of the settlement of the West was work, not conquest" (83). According to Steve Udall, the Wild West of popular perception is a falsehood; it's most important figures were not mountain men and trappers, gunmen and cowboys, or 49ers in search of gold. These men lived on the periphery. At the core were those resolute souls who spent their days struggling to bring the West into the domain of American civilization. It was these pioneers who immigrated to the Western frontier, staying there, breaking sod and forming towns that "founded" the West. This contention provides Udall with many subjects to excoriate, an activity Udall sets about with some delight. The California gold rush is described as one of the most "hare-brained ventures" in history (132). Politicians in the East speaking of Manifest Destiny were but "windbags" and "indolent speculators" (115). The army (and her generals) primary role was to "author atrocities" (176). Trappers, explorers, and gunslingers, are flippantly dismissed as "transitive outliers" (6). With the familiar caricatures of the dirty miners, stoic sheriffs, and daring outlaws gone, who is left to populate the West of our imaginations? If they are but romance, where can we find reality? Udall points to two groups - the religious leaders and missions of the early West, and the pioneer families who followed in their wake. Udall's illustrates this point in a very personal way. A decedent of such "founding" pioneers, Udall sketches a life history of both his and his wife's great-grand parents to reveal the day-to-day process by which the West was won. I found this section of the book to be one of the most interesting -- the eight individuals presented range from William Maxwell, the founder of a dozen towns across the West, to Jacon Hamblin, a famous "peacemaker" between Native American tribes and Mormons, to John Wesley Powell, an early scientist, geologist, and explorer of the West. While each of these vignettes presents lives as diverse as the West could provided, their stories are woven together through the central theme of settlement and toil. There was another facet that united Udall's ancestors: religion. All were members of the Mormon faith, and their stories show this. William Maxwell would not have been scrambling around the West building towns if the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City had not been telling him to do so. Understandably, Udall maintains that religious communities and leaders were the backbone of the American West. This argument is expanded beyond the Mormon theocracy: Udall documents the important function Franciscan Friars played in California, Reverend Jason Lee and his role in promoting settlement in Oregon, and Catholic missionary Evsebio Kinor, Arizona's "founding father." Most of these nam

Homesteaders, Religion, and the Winning of the West

Sturart Udall, the author of this history, served four tems as a Congressman from Arizona. He served eight years as the Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He is also, as this book shows, a thougthful student of the history of the American West. He combines a breadth of study with a personal touch and with stories from the experience of his family in the West that adds to the eloquence of his book."The Forgotten Founders" covers a great deal of terrain in a brief compass. Udall's goal is to show the importance of individual settlers in establishing the American West. Udall writes (p.37): "A shortcoming of histories that concentrate on broad outlines of events is the absence of human faces and stories of ordinary folk that would reveal what animated individuals and families and indicate the experiences they had. Yet only by considering individual human experience can we begin to develop a sense of what these men and women faced and an idea of the magnitude of their achievements."Udall's approach has a distincly Jeffersonian cast in emphasizing the role of small yeoman farmers to an independent citizenry. He discusses and quotes Thomas Jefferson to good effect (p. 135). Jefferson said:"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds."Udall also emphasizes the importance of religion as a motivating and civilizing force in the West's early development. He focuses poignantly upon the experience of his own ancestors, early adherents of the Mormon Church and influential in the development of the Mormon Church in Utah. His discussion culminates in a lengthy and forthright discussion of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. John D. Lee, Udall's great-grandfather was instrumental in this unhappy event and was executed in 1875 for his role in the massacre. Udall gives substantial attention to Catholic and Protestant efforts as well. He correctly points out that in a secular age, many people tend to denigrate the importance of religion as a motivating factor for people. The settlers of the West did not share some of the modern skepticism and cannot be understood apart from a consideration of the importance of religion to their lives. I was reminded particularly of Willa Cather's "Death Comes to the Archbishop." Udall discusses Cather (p 187) but might have considered her picture of Catholicism in the West in more detail as it supports his argument. In emphasizing the role of the small settler and of religion, Udall downplays the role of explorers such as Lewis and Clark and fur traders. He also tends to denigrate the role of the California gold rush of 1849 as having a lasting impact on Western development. He criticizes and downplays the importance of capitalist development of the West in mining, grazing and other large-scale activities