 Well, greetings. Thank you very much for tuning in. My name is Elliot West. I am professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas. And I'm here to give a presentation on the book that I recently published continental reckoning the American West in the age of expansion. I'm here at the invitation of the National Archives. I want to thank them certainly for that invitation for the opportunity to do this program. And I want to thank them also for the incomparable work they do in opening up the research of the American past to historians and to lay folks. It's something that historians rely on absolutely. Certainly it's an institution that I've used many, many times over the years. My dissertation was based in part from the National Archives and I used it certainly in the preparation of this book. Thank you. Thank you for the thank you to the National Archives. Thank you again, all of you for tuning in. The book, as I said, is continental reckoning. It is a, it seemed to get the slide to advance here. There we go. It was published in February by the University of Nebraska Press. It's a book I've worked on for well more than 20 years. Let me talk a little bit about what book is about and why I think it's worth people paying attention to the story is certainly critically important to understanding to understanding the course of certainly recent American history. Begin with a, I think an often overlooked or underappreciated fact, the age of expansion. Now that I mean a period that began in the 1840s in this country. In only three years, 1845 to 1848, the United States expanded by roughly 1.2 million acres. That's about three quarters of 1.2 million square miles. That's roughly three quarters of a billion acres. It began in 1845 with the annexation of Texas down there at the bottom of the map. Next year, 1846, the United States and a treaty with Great Britain require the Pacific Northwest. This will call Oregon country. At the same year 1846 we went to war with our neighbor to the south Mexico. The war lasted about two years, 1848 and ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which we gain what's called the Mexican session, basically the American Southwest California and the American Southwest. Three years, like a little bit less three years, about 28 months and 19 days as it turned out, in which we acquired an enormous amount of territory. To get an idea of how much land we're talking about, try to imagine the United States expanding over the next three years by that same amount of territory, expanding now to the south, up to the west, the south. What would the United States look like if we were to expand that much and that much territory to the nation during that period of time? Well, the United States would stretch southward, we would acquire all of Mexico, all of Central America, and about one half of the country of Columbia. Or if you want to think a little more globally here, try to imagine that between now today, May 9, 2023, and September the 24th, 2025, the United States would add to its territory, but land would roughly equal a little bit less than that of modern India. I think it's fair to say, we can all agree that things would happen following that. Try to begin to get your mind around the kind of implications of what it meant to add that much territory. There are challenges that that would present, the opportunities that that would present. It was a huge turning point, a huge pivot in the American story. And what was this country? It wasn't one thing. This country was that we would be acquired, it was divided among scores of different centers of power. It was the emergence of different cultures, mostly Native American cultures, many, many different peoples, an enormously diverse geography. And all of that somehow had to be brought under the control of the United States. Now, that's in 1848. Fast forward, about 30 years, let's say 18, around 1880. What did this country look like at that point? It looked like that. And roughly 30 years, that's well less than half of a normal lifetime. In 30 years, this country was organized politically. It was bound into the nation by technologies of transportation and communication. It was developed economically. It was virtually transformed environmentally, physically. 30 years happened so fast. By 1880, there is now what we can call what we now would call the American West. So that's one thing that I'm doing in this book. I'm trying to tell the story of this extraordinary episode of beginning with the expansion of the 1840s. Taking it up to this, taking the story up to about to about 1880. What we can really say is sort of the birth of this modern American region. Somewhere between one third, one half of the continuous contiguous of 48 states. An amazing, an amazing story really incredible be diverse story diverse. So many chapters to it. So that's one thing, but the book is really about two things as I as I began to develop and research and to write this story I became increasingly convinced. This was really, there were really two stories here. One was the birth of the West. The other was the absolutely critical role that this new part of America this is the American West playing. And one of the great transformations of American history. During these same years, roughly the second half of the 19th century. That the fundamental trajectory of the United States shifts on to a new course. It shifts towards narrative, the American narrative shifts on to a new course that carries us into what we would come to know in the 20th and the 21st centuries as modern America. What we see during these years is not just the emergence of the West, not just the birth of the West. We also see the emergence and the birth of modern America. And what I'm arguing in this book is that the two, these two developments are absolutely intertwined. They're like historical twins. And like human twins, in many ways, we can't understand one without the other. These two stories are bound up together. We don't appreciate that enough. We don't appreciate enough the way in which the American West played the birth, the emergence of the American West played in the creation of this nation that we know as modern, the modern American state. It's quite a transformation and it's critically, critically important to understanding who we are today. So what I'd like to do today is to concentrate on that second story, the relationship between the emergence of the West and the emergence of modern America. Concentrate on that second story and to illustrate that by three examples of these connections between these two developments sections between birth of the West and birth of modern America. One way to get at that is to think out of a mind game. Ask yourself, when you talk about modern America, what, what do you mean? What are we looking at? You might try to make a list of those traits, those things that, you know, that identify modern America has differed from the America that came before. Ask yourself, what is it about the United States in the 20th century, the 21st century that is fundamentally different from the United States in, let's say, 1850, 1840, 1830. What is it? What is it that makes modern America modern? What does it make a list? Now, ask yourself, looking at that list, looking at those traits, those distinctive traits of modern America. Are there any ways we can connect them to this emergence of the West, to the birth of the West? Are there any ways that we can, we can see, suggest how the emergence of the birth of the West then played roles in the transformation in these distinctive traits that came about by the turn of the century, by the opening of the 20th century? I think there were. I became convinced that there were many examples of this. What I'd like to do today is to look at three of them. Three cases in which we can look at these distinctive traits of modern America and relate them to the events of the consolidation of the West, its integration into the nation, its integration into this larger, into this larger world. Let's look at a few of those. What is it? What is the distinguishes modern America? Well, at one time, I think it's irrefutable. I think it's something we can certainly all agree upon, that modern America, the modern United States today is the great global economic superpower. We're all aware, of course, that in some ways we're being challenged by others, China in particular, but put this in perspective, put this in perspective. The gross domestic product of the United States today, about $20 trillion annually, is one and a half times greater than China. It is several times greater than those following China of the United Kingdom, Germany, of Japan. It's really an additional question. We are the 800 pound gorilla economically speaking of the global economy, not just of the world today. We are the greatest economic power in the history of humanity. And how might the American West have played a role in that after its acquisition in the 1840s and over the next 30, 40, 50 years? Let's begin by what I call in the book the great coincidence, the great coincidence. The last of those three steps of expansion. The Mexican War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended that war, that treaty was signed by this man on the left, Nicholas Trist. On February the 2nd, 1848, in this suburb of Mexico City, this February 2nd, January 24th, 1848, in Northern California along the American River. This other man on the left, James Marshall, looked down, he was helping, he was a New Jersey carpenter who had come out during the gold rush and came out of California to work on John Sutter's state. And he was helping to build a mill and he looked down into the American River and he saw this little flak, glittering flak he reached out and picked it up. It was gold. A little flak of gold was worth about half a dollar at that time. That set loose what was far and away up until that time, the greatest gold rush in human history. Difficult to overestimate the amount of gold, the impact of this gold rush on the American economy during the next, during the next several years. So, again, think of this now, January 24th, Marshall finds that first speck of gold. They were the second nine days later, that's about 200 hours. Within about 200 hours, the United States acquires California, and California begins to be revealed as arguably the richest place on planet Earth. Well, the great coincidence and its impact was, was enormous. As I said, this gold rush was, was, was by magnitude greater, anything that had happened, anything that had happened before. More gold was mined in the banner year of 1852 in California that had been mined across the world during the entire 18th century. More gold was mined in California, and in Australia, a rush that came soon after that, during the first seven or eight years after Marshall's discovery, that had been mined across the entire world from 1492 from the Colombian landfall until 1848. So much gold, so much gold was being produced in California. That in 18, when the San Francisco NET was founded, and then began to process this gold and the gold bricks. They discovered that so much gold was being processed that they couldn't handle it all. The furnaces couldn't handle all the gold dust was being blown out of the smoke stacks. So they had to go around, go around and do the neighborhood buildings and neighboring buildings and sort of sweep up the gold dust these gilded rooftops of these buildings. A lot of gold, a lot of gold. And this was followed over the next several years by other rushes gold and then silver rushes the first silver rush at the Comstock load in 1858. And then across these silver and silver strikes across across the American West. So, in other words, exactly coincident with the acquisition of the far west. The West begins to turn out the churn out enormous amounts of well, and this is precisely at the time when the United States was retooling into this modern economy. An economy that is industrial economy is much more urban. In other words, the West began to provide the raw wealth, the funds necessary for this great retooling of the American economy. So, in the American economy began to transform during these years into the one that we would know that we would know in the next century that we know today is this economics. And yes, it did. How is it financed. It was financed in part by this extraordinary outpouring of wealth that immediately began to be revealed and to be discovered in this, this new part of the nation. And that turned out to be just, just the start of it. The gold and silver, which are the certain most important what I call precious metals in the world. The most value at the time, the most valuable non precious metal was copper copper that was necessary for the wiring of this electrification. Copper is absolutely essential for the building of factories copper is essential for the creation of this new, this new communications network of the of the telegraph. Well, turns out the American West was also the time, the richest area on earth for the production of copper. This is like Montana, but Montana, like Arizona. Elsewhere this map shows you copper deposits today, but you can see these go back to what the far west there the southwest, the southwest and the northern United States was the leading producer by 1880. The United States was far and away the leading producer of producer of copper across the world at the very time that copper was actually essential for this economic industrial transformation of the economy. Now this transformation was one from the, the age of wood, the earlier, earlier economy to the age of iron and steel. But you got to remember that wood was still very, very important to this wood necessary, like in railroads would necessary for the construction of these, the most productive minds in the West. enormous amounts of wood were needed whole forest was stripped in the west to provide the wood necessary for these, for these changes. And as it turned out, the American West was, say the least, a place where you could find a lot of wood those rich forests of the northwest. A great redwood forest of the Northwest, huge old growth forest of the Pacific, of the Pacific West. We need wood, we got it. We got it from this new land that we had, we had applied. It's almost as if, as we began this great transformation would carry us into this, into this role of economic superpower. If we needed something, all we needed to sort of look around the West, there it was, the West, raw wealth, the raw, the raw wealth and gold and silver, the other kinds of subsidiary necessities for this copper wood. And it would go on and on, you know, take this into the future, think of the, think of what we would need in the 20th century petroleum economy based on based on the internal congestion, conduction in uranium or nuclear power. If we look around, we need something, we look to the West, and there it is. The West, it was this great storehouse, treasure, treasure house of resources necessary for this, for this critical transformation. And it shows up in places that you might not otherwise expect. Here with the appalling slaughter of the American bison in the 19th century, the near extinction of this one of those prolific life forms on the North American continent. Within 10 years, the surviving population of bison, which is probably around 15 million in 1870 was reduced to barely 1000. It's a famous story. It's a story that we shake our heads and pluck our tongues about. We need to ask ourselves, how did that happen? Why did that happen? Why over suddenly this was in the year 1872 as it turned out, why right at that moment suddenly there was this, there was this massive destruction of bison. Well, it's a story basically of supply and demand. There was suddenly around 1872, suddenly a voracious demand for bison hides. Why? Well, there was a global shortage of leather. Other than have been supplied them to that point. Probably by the United States, mostly by the nation of Argentina, but that, but that supply of cattle in Argentina, providing that leather was running dry. Why did they need so much? It wasn't normally think of belts and boots and so forth. It was rather for factories. The factories that were appearing in the United States, the factories during Western Europe needed enormous amounts of leather for belts like on this, this photograph of the gaskets in these things. This was part of the raw stuff that factories that patients needed for their industrialization. We don't normally think of that, but that was a huge demand. And it was discovered in 1871, 72. It was discovered that in fact, while they're running out of cattle, but bison hides could be processed into perfectly usable industrial leather. Suddenly, at that point, there was this almost this extraordinary demand for those animals that were grazing out there, out there on the great plains. Suddenly they began to be absolutely devastated slaughtered the bison had this. See in this slide kind of in itself a kind of industrial look. This was sort of industry on the great plains. Shipped up by these new systems of transportation, like the railroad. So, why did the bison almost disappeared over 10 years. Well, thank God they didn't really need to come back. But why did it. Well, what killed them. Well, the factories did. In a way, we can say that the factories ate the bison. Once again, the American West fighting this fundamental resource that was necessary for this transformation of the American economy. And you see this happening all over agriculture. Like in the California Central Valley is essentially an industrial enterprise. The American West is in many ways leading the way for this economic transformation. Its own efforts applying industrial technologies to agriculture, massive production of brain coming out of the Central Valley. It was sent, not just to the East United States, but sent over the Pacific Rim, China, that was sent more than 17,000 nautical miles to England. California Central Valley was the primary foreign source of wheat of grain in England. People in Liverpool sat down to dinner and had bread. Quite often the bread they hit we're reading came from a came from California being produced in California by these new industrial industrial techniques. This is Fred of the Great Plains and what are called bananas apart. This is the illustration of the cover of the cover of the book. This is the industrial techniques applied to the growing, growing crops. So, the West itself is in many ways leading the way in this industrialization is this transformation into a modern, a modern, a modern industrial power. So the first point I will make is we can agree that the United States is a is an economic superpower. We can then look to the West to help us understand how that came about. I think we can see some obvious and obvious connections here both of the sources necessary and examples of this of this economic transformation. Second, a second way in which we can see the West as a force in the modernization of America. Another thing I think we can agree on is that the United States today is I think again without question. The leading scientific force in the world. There are ways we can, we can measure this. I would back. For example, I would ask the question. Okay, over the past several years, last past 10 years. Looking at the Nobel prizes in the sciences. Nobel prizes in the sciences. How many have come have been given to how many Nobel laureates are there in the United States? And how does that compare with other nations? If you do that, what you will see is the number of Nobel laureates in the United States in these scientific areas is greater than the next six nations on that list. So we are, once again, you know, Caltech or Bell Labs or MIT or whatever we are the superpower in scientific research. How did that happen? It's not something we would normally associate with the American West and think of sort of lonesome cowboys and sourdows and, you know, minors, lump creeks in California. But one of the things that surprised me when I got into research is how the West during these years was arguably the most fertile and active scientific laboratory on Earth. The field of the field of the field of theology and archeology and anthropology and epidemiology and oceanography. So I think a thickenology and look to the West and you will see you're likely to see extraordinary work being done out in this research and thinking that it's contributing to this period, which was I think, again, without question, one of the most active and progressive periods in the advance of scientific thought in modern history. And again, we can use many examples to illustrate this, but let me focus on one. This was one of the organs might be called one of the Prince of Sciences during these years. And that is the field of paleontology. The investigation of ancient life through the search for fossils and the attempt to make some sense of that fossil records. The first one was without doubt, the most active laboratory in paleontology during these years and so I'll try to explain in a moment. There was a reason for this. My paleontology was such an active field why there was such attention given to this to this field. The first point to make is the extraordinary effort that was made out west and extraordinary contributions of the West in this in this in this area. Well, two men in particular are associated with this more than any others. For these two fellows. OC Marsh and Edward Coke. They are. They were both Easterners. Marsh was a professor of paleontology at Yale University. Every pope was a native Pennsylvanian, the son of a very wealthy Pennsylvania family. He was an independent independent researcher. The other marching pope were the key figures in this in this remarkable effort during this time. They were also bitter bitter rivals. I frankly loathe each other. And they were engaged. Some authors have called the bone wars bitter competition to come up with the most funds between them to make the greatest, make the greatest splash. And this was incidentally sort of front page news. This was a huge story at the time is a great popular interest in the in the competition and the rivalry between these between these two guys. Michael Crichton popular novelist has even written the novel based on based on this rather. What struck me which was interesting to me was that this work in the West and paleontology was conducted not just not just by these superstars. I'll talk more about them in just a moment. Also by ordinary West ordinary Western people on the ground itself. Here's one example. Bill Reed will you make bill read bill read you can see here from the slide. He was a hunter meat hunter for the Union Pacific Railroad. He was hard to provide me, you know, meals for the people building for the railroad and for those working the railroad. And by some hunting elk hunting deer. But he was also one of many examples out there who became sort of amateur boat hunters amateur paleontologists. Self talk read up on himself. He is able to identify the spots that he would make. And he, you know, another fellow another fellow meat hunter came across one in particular that caught his interest. He contacted OC Marsh told him about it has to be paid for it. And he was our stick him up on it. And Mars ended up powering him as his, as his primary sort of field man working out there. We was responsible for discovering one of the great fossil beds in the West, the Como fossil beds in Wyoming. And read was the man who discovered and help excavate and put together. Famous example, this is the triple docus Carnegie, which was in today in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, some of you might have seen it. So, they'll read the meat hunter. We went on to become a sheep rancher later was an example one one example of one of these sort of ordinary guys out there who was caught up in this fever, caught up in this passion. Searching through the chalk biz of the American Great Plains to unveil to unveil these these great mysteries of the past. Another Charles Sternberg, Sternberg was a teenager about East when he came out to Kansas to join his brother's brother was a surgeon with Dr. Fort Harker, Kansas. Brother also had a ranch outside of Fort Harker. Here's, here's Harker this is a desolate, desolate Western Coast. And he asked Charles to come out to help him help him with the ranch. And as Charles doing that he became fascinated by the discovery first of all of fossils of ancient plant life area what's called paleo botany. And, he eventually collected what became one of the great collection of the great gatherings of paleo botany. It's now today is today in the. He's in the natural history of that case. In Washington. And then he went on to Sturburne went on to a long career, and in paleontology in the search for the bones of ancient, ancient life. For the Sternberg, for example, and you can go to museums across, across the Western world and find the results of Sternberg's work. This is in the London Museum of Natural History. This is a triceratops discovered by us. So we see that out West is this remarkable series of discovery hundreds, hundreds of new species, including dozens and dozens of dinosaurs. We're discovered through the, through the work of people like Marsh and Coke, and people like Reid and Sternberg and others out there. It was a remarkable effort, remarkable effort. Why was there such attention to paleontology? Why was this really this passion on hunting during these years? Well, I think you can guess it was tied up directly with what was certainly the most volatile, hotly contested question of the day. And that revolved around, of course, the work of the God is in theories of Charles Darwin evolution through natural selection. Which had implications, not just for American science, science, but of course, for the very understanding of humans are of our deep, of our deep past, moral, theological meanings in addition to scientific meanings. Well, it was that they really drove, I think, more than anything else, the search for ancient life, and do its fossil remains. Geology entered upon the earth being incomparably older than what people had believed before. Certainly older than the standard sort of theological estimates of the age of the earth. The earth must have been. It had to have been millions and millions of years old, not thousands of years old for this evolution to provide the time for this evolution to take place. So the geologists were establishing the antiquity of the years. The geologists were showing in fact the earth was is as old enough to give room to give the time for Darwin's ideas to develop. It was a paleontologist who would get down to basics and to try to try to pursue the questions of just how, how this worked, how natural selection worked. Probably the most important work was done by Marsh himself of the of a great pair, Marsh and Coal, who was Marsh who came up with the finds, the discoveries that went the farthest for confirming Darwin's ideas. Here he is. Center top, of course. These are all Yale grad students, by the way. Mars should go out with these teams of graduate students out of the West every year, almost every year in search of the fossil remains, which are trying to piece this together. Working also with those locals out there like read, like read. Well, it was March you came up with what were I think the two most important confirmations discoveries that confirmed Darwin's ideas of evolution through natural through natural selection. The first one had to do with a sequencing of evolutionary change. Darwin argued that if you take any living species today, you would see that it was a product of step by step by step by step by step backward through gradual changes over time sort of links and evolutionary chain. That carried carried us into an animal, any kind of a species of the sea today, human beings included. Well, his critics said that that's interesting, but prove it. You have any fossil examples of that Darwin didn't. But Marsh came up with one. Mars provided this first evolutionary chain through the collection of bones of the American horse. Specifically, specifically also remains a horse pose and horse close feet of horses. But Mars did work many, many years and the collection of these bones was to put together. Absolutely clear sequencing of how one particular type of toe and foot. Let into change gradually over to gradually over long periods of time to the next one, which led to the next one next one which ended up with the modern horse modern equus. It was kind of a creation of this. Classic evolutionary Bush, the thing that way with different branches. Most of them dying out. Some of them persisting over time, which lead from over 50 million years in this case from our Ethereum and they're at the bottom. This is a sort of colleague sized. First horse, he'll hit us. It was first called dawn horse up until the necklace today, 50 million years. So, or his critics said, okay, give us an example. And Mars said, okay, here's one. And it was just simply unquestionable. In this case, it was impossible to refuse this. I will also argue that if you trace something like the evolution of equus back even farther, you will see that it branched off other earlier brand other earlier parts of that evolutionary shrub. And each of those branches branched off others, and each of those branched off still others. What I was saying is, if you trace it back far enough, you will find that every species is distantly related to just about every other to every other. We all have this common origin. And consequently, over time, you will see species that seem to be so very different. In fact, our cousins, distant cousins, cousins. For example, today whales. We know the whales are just related to bears. Well, Darwin suggested that one example of this was a distant relationship between birds, modern birds, and modern reptiles. He said they come from the same, some of the same branch. Again, critics said, well, prove it. Show us. And Mars did. He did in this publication. Put on porno thieves. What on porno thieves was a was a national magnificent public magnificent illustrated publication of birds, ancient birds. Quite clearly had other relation other characteristics that linked them to ancient reptiles are there are the dinosaurs to the ancient generators of modern of modern reptiles. So, it was a Dharma's arguing that, for example, Hawk is related to a rattlesnake. Well, you've got to find common ancestors for each of those two things. Mars did. He did his centerpiece of this argument was this a six foot long avian. This is a robotic avian that swam through, swam through ancient seas and on the Great Plains, called a hisperonus regalis. You show the certain bones leg bones of particular of hisperonus regalis were fairly related to the leg bones of other dinosaurs and other creatures of reptilian creatures of time that evolved into reptiles. But the real clencher was the head, the head of hisperonus regalis. Well, particularly the, the bill, the beak, which had teeth. So here was a toothed bird, a bird with teeth. And these teeth furthermore were related to the teeth that we would find in dinosaurs and teeth that would show that in turn evolved into the teeth of modern, the modern reptiles. So, again, this was a, this was a clencher. We can incidentally call this hisperonus regalis, which was of its translates as a royal bird the West. So in his research with the horse, which is arguing along with the bison and the most iconic Western animal there is, and the royal bird of the West and Mars would draw upon this Western work to make these two great strides toward the confirmation of Charles Darwin's ideas of natural natural selection. Also, Darwin was impressed by this. In fact, Darwin wrote when he received, quote, on Tornathese publication, the next day he wrote back to Mars and said, this is the, this is the greatest contribution to my ideas in the last 20 years. Going back to the last 20 years, he meant the publication of origin species. So Darwin was saying this, this discovery, this discovery was the most important confirmation since I published this very controversial theory. So, if we want to go back and ask the question, what makes modern America different? One way we can answer, I think it's by saying we are not just an economic but a scientific superpower, scientific superpower. And if we look for back to the West, or the beginnings of that, so I said we can see that in many, many different areas of society. But this is a good example, maybe the one of the most significant scientific areas of research of the day paleontology and geology. It was in the West, these great breakthroughs remain. So in the West, if you can see the beginnings of this trajectory of the United States toward this position today at the leading at the head of the head of the modern scientific world. The third way, modern America and the question of citizenship. Here, what I'm suggesting here is we think of what I like to call the American family, the American family or the American also. Now that I mean, what we need the populations of people who are what we believe will be accepted as members of the American of the American family whether we're talking politically, socially, culturally, who do we live in the house. Who do we live in the house. And I think it's also fair to say, what we see in modern America is the is the comes and go is sort of a pendulum movement, but certainly over time, a greater and greater and greater acceptance of groups different groups into the American family into into the house, not just in terms of numbers we expect that of course the population grows, but more importantly here more specifically here in terms of different cultural by varieties, increasing diversity of participation of inclusion in the American family. Certainly, in terms of race, ethnicity of cultures of language, you see then over time is this, this is gradual expansion or comprehensive embrace for different groups. That I think also characterizes modern American. Well, can we look back to the West and see beginnings of that as well. I think we can. Now, when I say that this goes back to the middle of the 19th century, the latter part of the 19th century. What was happening back in the middle of the 19th century that as an example of this, this expansion of the American family. I suspect that the first thing how you would think of quite rightfully, of course, is emancipation. And the end of African American slavery at the end of the Civil War. And the efforts after the Civil War to bring freed people were fully into the American family into American citizenship programs like those of the Freedmen's Bureau of Education. It's an economic place in American society, educated in various ways in which they are brought in, brought more fully into the American household. And of course is that absolutely true. We should keep that close to center stage. But you got to keep in mind that this didn't start the emancipation. And really with expansion began with expansion of the 1840s went after all as we push their boundaries to the Pacific coast. We were bringing within the United States boundaries. Towers of different native peoples, Indian peoples, extraordinary variety of people. Many, many different cultures and ways of life and languages and cosmologies and so forth, brought into the country and places like California. This was arguably the most culturally diverse place in the Western Hemisphere, California, each of these are different native peoples. And we also began a process of trying to integrate them were fully in into into the American line, promising them citizenship eventually. They finally got it 1924 along the way we would school them literally quite littering in the American way of life and the way to do this of course the laboratory in which this was to take place this was to happen was reservations. Back in reservations, we can check our heads, sort of cultural arrogance of us building people. This is who you ought to be. You've got to step forward on this ramp of progress and to improve your condition to become modern civilized people. And we should do that. Many reasons, many reasons to criticize and to condemn the reservation system certainly isn't effective it was corrupt. Inefficient. But it was after all, the official attempt to bring people to admit them into American citizenship. They were committed to that. Not to destroy them, but to eventually bring them into the American household. How are we to do this. One way to get at it is to look at what are called peace metals. These were metals given by the administration at any one time during the 19th century to leaders of American Indian tribes and groups express our kinship with them to express our support of them. One side of each of these piece of metals was the silhouette of the president of the time. On the other side was illustrations, which spoke to that administration's ideal policy toward Indian people. So if you go back to Jefferson, the first piece of metals under Thomas Jefferson, it was focused on trade, sort of clashed hands of trade with far Western people. Lincoln was on the verso of Lincoln's. Well, shows an American Indian with a classic planes headdress plowing a field. It shows a search in the background. It shows a schoolhouse on there to the left. If you look closely you can see any kids out front schoolhouse playing baseball. So this was, this was the vision of the Lincoln administration of what our policy should be toward Indian people's bring them into the American economy as farmers. We should Christianize them, make them part of the American mainstream by converting them to Christianity. We should educate their children in order to bring them into the mainstream of American life. The question about this I think should strike about this is the obvious parallel between this and the policy toward free people. Again underway just shortly after this, this metal was struck. We were to invite free people into the economy through 40 acres of the mule. We were to provide to the Freedman's Bureau and provide education for them. So this was all driven by sort of an evangelical Christianity. People like Oliver Howard, who was a head first head of the Breedman's Bureau and for him Howard University was named today. See here I think is almost precise parallel between our policies in the East with freed folks and in the West with American Indians. Part of the same part of the same process. Part of this process again of bringing more people into more different groups into into American society. But at the same time, can also say as a basic characteristic of modern America that every step of the way in opening up our embrace of new groups has been met with resistance, often violent resistance. No, no, we need to keep the American family tighter that it is certain groups out of that family. We need to keep doors to the American household shut and locked. And this was true in the West as well. Again, we think of this most often I think in terms of the East free people, the violent resistance of the Ku Klux Klan. The efforts especially after 1877 1880, you know, to clamp down to pose a racial white white supremacist order, racial order on the East. The same thing was happening out West. There were those who were attempting to do something basically the same. And California, we see a case of, I think, unquestioned efforts, genocide, attempted genocide, genocide is thrown around, I think, too easily today does not apply in many other places in the West toward Indians. California outright assaults on native peoples slaughter of the efforts by militias funded by the California government to send militias against against Native gatherings and to slaughter them to kill them. To to enforce to bring them into forcefully as his forced labor, including in the brain farms of central California to see here. One result of this was this catastrophic decline of California native population, roughly an estimated 150,000 and 1848 the time of discovery. That was something in the neighborhood of 90% over the next over the next 50 years. Well, any sort of the only ones. Hispanic peoples were brought into the American household with the treaty what would be a doggo which, which, which permitted which citizenship to all former Mexican citizens, if they chose to, they could choose to go back to Mexico or to keep their country as they wished they were granted citizenship for the stroke of the pen. But just as with Indian peoples, there was violent resistance against this, especially attempts to impose a white down racial order in California, and in the Southwest for the concentration of Hispanic peoples was once again we associate this kind of thing. With the southeast aftermath of emancipation resistance through emancipation. And we think of lynching, especially after around 1880 as obvious expression of this hostility. Well, recent research now recent research now suggests that not only was the same thing happening out West. But that thing on a scale that was at least as appalling is that among free people in the southeast way historians measure lynchings and group is to ask how many are there are 100,000 people of that particular group over a particular time. And we associate mostly with the southeast, particular in places like Mississippi, which are the highest rate of lynching, as far as we can tell. But wasn't after 1880. It was. We estimate about 53 or 100,000 persons. What we asked the same question about the lynchings of his fellows in Southern California in the Southwest, during the feeding period leading up to 1880 period immediately after expansion, 1848, around 1880. What was the rate there 473. And we're just starting to do this research. It's far better documented in places like Mississippi there is a place. But the initial indication is that this is that this is at least as awful, at least as appalling up West as it was in the East. An example would be Chinese in the West, who come in great numbers, especially after about 1852. And in this case, the effort was not to bring them into the American family but rather to exclude the opposition to the Chinese presence was so great in 1987. The United States passed Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which is the only time in American history, and a particular people have been denied access to this country, not just limited, but denied access to this country on the basis of their ethnicity. As you see here, the idea was to build our own Chinese wall, a great wall of China in this case to exclude them. So, if we again ask ourselves, what does modern America mean, I think part of the answer would be, well, it's a story of the 20th century and 21st century, a story of a gradually expanding inclusion of our groups. And the story at the same time of bitter resistance, often violent resistance. This sort of swing back and forth, swing back and forth during the 20th century up until today's. As you know, we are going through another period in which there seems to be a rise of efforts of white supremacy of violence against Asian people in this country. So we're sort of swinging the pendulum swimming back now to this other way. That's what makes America, one of the things makes America modern, in addition to our, in addition to our, in addition to our scientific supremacy and our economic economic supremacy. Well, I hope this has given you some sense of what I'm trying to do in this book. In this case are in this case the show. Tell the story, not just of the birth of the West, but also to also about the role of the West in this fundamental transformation of American life. This is the shift of the American net narrative to help us understand who we are today. So what I'm suggesting here I suppose is we cannot possibly understand who we are today as Americans, without looking back and bringing into this story, the role in the transformation of the nation through the transformation and the birth of the American. I hope that's giving you some understanding of what's what this is and hope that's giving you some incentive to explore this question my book or elsewhere, explore this question to bring the West more fully into the American story. Thank you so much for this. I enjoyed it greatly. Again, my thanks to the National Archives, not just for the invitation to be with you here today, but most of all, through their extraordinary work and helping people like me in my professional effort to try to understand the American past a bit more fully. Thank you very much.