Trails West: Pushing Back the American Frontier

Perhaps no saga is more exciting, evocative, controversial, or more often distorted than the story of the “winning of the American West.” This workshop will survey the history of the great migration that displaced a people and shaped a continent. It's the story of  waves of largely European settlers pushing forward into a “promised land" already occupied by a rich complex of cultures, and then building their empires with the labor of enslaved peoples. Our topics include the fur trade, Lewis and Clark’s voyage of discovery, the mountain men, the Civil War and the westward stampede, the Pony Express, the telegraph, the railroads, the cattle barons, and the empire builders. And we’ll take a closer look at the myths and realities of the “Indians and cowboys,” the misunderstood icons of an extraordinary age. Finally, we will examine a few of the most central political realities of our own 21st century by reflecting on how the slaveholding South really won the West.