NCSS presentation by Stephen Marcotte & Ruth Writer

1. Experiencing the History
of the
North American West
through Literature
NCSS—Seattle—2012
Stephen Marcotte, Beaconsfield ,QC, High School
rugencourt@hotmail.com
Ruth Writer, Western Michigan University
rutha.writer@comcast.net

2. Comparison
United States
 Earlier history than Canada
 Frontier “ended” by 1890
 Army to keep peace
 Major conflicts
 Role of railroads
Canada
 Last Best West
 North West Mounted Police
 Fewer conflicts
 Metis experience
 Role of railroads

3. Stakeholders
United States
 Natives
 U.S. Government
 State Governments
 Citizens
 Immigrants
Canada
 Natives
 British Empire
 Canadian Government
 Provinces & Territories
 Citizens
 Immigrants

4. Diverse Points of View
 Different settlers = different views
 Native
 Settler farmer
 Cowboy
 Rancher
 Miner
 Immigrant or migrant
 Canadian experience vs. U.S. experience

6. Students should be able to:
 Compare/contrast the experiences of the
Canadian West and the experiences in the
western U.S.
 Recognize perspectives and preconceptions
 Use signals from numerous literature resources to
support a point of view
 Explain how different individuals would think and
act differntly about different issues
 Understand various connections across the border

7.  Cayton, Perry, Winkler. American Pathways to the Present. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1998.

8. History of U.S. West
 Natives forced off lands lost culture
 U.S. settlers and European immigrants braved
hardships of life on prairies
 Machines made farming, mining, and ranching
big business
 As farm incomes declined, farmers’ protest
grew
 Western mythology continued for decades.

9. History of Canadian West
 Natives fared somewhat better in Canada
 American and European immigrants hoped for
new starts and adapted to Canadian prairies
 Industrial goods and rail transformed farming,
mining and ranching into big business
 Metis rebelled against government intrusions
 Farmers protested unfairness of life in the
West.
 Western Canadian mythology continued

10. “Presley was determined that his poem should be of the West, that world's frontier of Romance,
where a new race, a new people--hardy, brave, and passionate--were building an empire; where
the tumultuous life ran like fire from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn again, primitive,
brutal, honest, and without fear. Something (to his idea not much) had been done to catch at that
life in passing, but its poet had not yet arisen. The few sporadic attempts, thus he told himself,
had only touched the keynote. He strove for … the great song that should embrace in itself a
whole epoch, a complete era, the voice of an entire people, wherein all people should be
included--they and their legends, their folk lore, their fightings, their loves and their lusts, their
blunt, grim humour, their stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a day
and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their heroism and
bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity--a true and fearless setting
forth of a passing phase of history, un- compromising, sincere; each group in its proper
environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine--all this,
all the traits and types of every community from the Dakotas to the Mexicos, from Winnipeg to
Guadalupe, gathered together, swept together, welded and riven together in one single, mighty
song, the Song of the West. That was what he dreamed, while things without names--thoughts
for which no man had yet invented words, terrible formless shapes, vague figures, colossal,
monstrous, distorted-- whirled at a gallop through his imagination.”
Frank Norris—The Octopus

11. Western Lit. south of the Border

12. History of U.S. West

15. Natives
 Black Elk Speaks—interviews by John G.
Neihardt
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ8eQCKiewA
 Helen Hunt Jackson—A Century of Dishonor
 Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uFHNPXkumQ&feature=fvwrel –haunting song with captions
“The men are dead. The children are freezing to death. Hear me, my chiefs?
My hear tis sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no
more forever.” ~~1877
 Dee Brown—Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTmvrHoyMZ8 –Buffy Sainte Marie

16. Mining
 Mark Twain—Roughing It
 http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=2906548
 California
 Nevada
 Colorado
 Alaska

17. Railroad
 Frank Norris—The Octopus
 Free e-book on line— www.gutenberg.org
 http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=2579507
 “Hell on Wheels”
 “Men who Made America”

18. Farming Settlements
 Hamlin Garland—Main Travelled Roads, Boy
Life on the Prairie
 http://books.google.com/books?id=skYLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA166&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepag
e&q&f=false
 Threshing experience, snaring gophers, snakes

19. Women of the West
 Willa Cather--My Antonia
 www.gutenberg.org
“She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires
the imagination, could still stop one’s breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow
revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand
on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and
tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had
been so tireless in serving generous emotions”
 Laura Ingalls Wilder—Little House on the
Prairie
“Oh no, I never do much ironing, except the outside clothes. We must not iron out the fresh air
and sunshine, you know. It is much more healthful not to, the doctors say.” Seriously, there is
something very refreshing about sheets and pillow slips just fresh from the line, after being
washed and dried in the sun and air. Just try them that way and see if your sleep is not sweeter. ”

20. Cattle Frontier
 Jack Thorp—”Little Joe the Wrangler”
"Stampede" by Frederick Remington

21. Nature
 John Ise—Sod and Stubble
 Grasshopper plague description
 Free full text available on line
 http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89105729420#page/49/mode/1up

24. Dear America
My Name is America
A series of historical fiction in diary format
By well-known children’s authors
Theses books, based on historical fact, feature girls and boys ages 9-12
These have Western history focus:
 The Great Railroad Race—transcontinental railroad
 Behind the Masks—gold mining in 1880s California
 Across the Wild and Lonesome Prairie—trek west
 Land of Buffalo Bones—Minnesota in 1873
 My Face to the Wind—teacher on the Nebraska prairie in 1881
 Seeds of Hope—gold rush
 Westward to Home—life on the Oregon Trail
 The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung—boy’s life in California gold mining era
 The Journal of Jedediah Borstow—An Emigrant on the Oregon Trail
 The Journal of Joshua Loper—a Black cowboy

25. Western Lit. of Canada

29. First Nations
 Buffy Sainte Marie
 Harry Robinson—”Captive in an English
Circus”
 “Red River Valley”—traditional song of the
West written during the Riel Rebellion in 1870

30. Can you remember the times
That you have held your head high
And told all your friends of your Indian claim
Proud good lady and proud good man
Your great-great grandfather from Indian blood
sprang
And you feel in your heart for these ones
Oh it's written in books and in song
That we've been mistreated and wronged
Well over and over I hear the same words
From you good lady and you good man
Well listen to me if you care where we stand
And you feel you're a part of these ones
When a war between nations is lost
The loser, we know, pays the cost
But even when Germany fell to your hands
Consider dear lady, consider dear man
You left them their pride and you left them their
land
And what have you done to these ones
Has a change come about Uncle Sam
Or are you still taking our lands
A treaty forever George Washington signed
He did dear lady, he did dear man
And the treaty's being broken by Kinzua Dam
And what will you do for these ones
Oh, it's all in the past you can say
But it's still going on here today
The government now want the Iroquois land
That of the Senaca and the Cheyenne
It's here and it's now you can help us dear man
Now that the buffalo's gone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BCWJYTCfjSg

31. Sitting Bull
 Historica produced Heritage Minutes with a
wide variety of topics
 Sitting Bull
 https://www.historica-dominion.ca/content/heritage-minutes/sitting-
bull?media_type=41&media_category=32
 Also: Scattering of Seeds
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut94NuwHqMI

32. Metis Experience in Canada
 10,000 of 12,000 in Red River Colony of
Manitoba
 Native and European merged families
 French speaking
 Roman Catholic
 Fur trader background
Rest of Canada had 3.5 million population

33. Louis Riel—Leader of Metis
 One of most controversial figures in Canada
 Role still debated today
 Metis saw Riel as hero and protector of culture
 Non-Metis saw Riel as villain and traitor
 Victim of religious and racial bigotry?
PROVINCIAL RIGHTS vs. NATIONAL RIGHTS

34. Riel Rebellion
October1869
 Metis sense of Nationalism
 Riel seized Fort Garry—center of Red R. colony
 No shots fired
 Created self government with List of Rights
 Barred Canadian official from entry
 Goal—negotiate with Ottawa to ensure rights
 Role of U.S.A.—annexation in question
 Role of clergy
 Role of Hudson Bay Company
 Points of View--discussion

35.  Fled to U.S. after Riel Rebellion in 1870
 Allied with Irish rebels who threatened Canada
 Elected to Parliament twice
 Preoccupied with religious matters
 Time in mental institutions—Quebec
 Depression, hallucinations, visions
 Told to enjoy a quiet life in future
 Married in 1881
 Became trader, interpreter, teacher [bored]
 U.S. citizenship -1883

36. Northwest Rebellion
1884
 Metis unhappy again
 Fled Red River for Saskatchewan River Valley
 Surveyors again into Metis lands
 Land, language, culture at issue
 Natives demoralized
 Riel called upon again to lead
 Riel returned to Canada to lead Metis
 Tried negotiation with Ottawa—no deal
 Rail and telegraph that far—army sent after RCMP
arrived

37. Riel Trial
"Life, without the dignity of an intelligent being, is not worth having."
 Captured
 Still seen as suspect of murder
 Treason—6 counts
 Trial—sanity in question
 Convicted by 6 non Metis jurors
 Hanged—16 Nov. 1885 @ 41
 Again Anglo/Franco split
 Traitor or Martyr?
https://www.historica-dominion.ca/content/heritage-minutes/louisriel?media_type=41&media_category=32

38. Mining
 Pierre Berton
 Robert Service
 Cremation of Sam McGee
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJNZwuamwj0
 Shooting of Dan McGrew
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqdL6bTiMhE
 Julie Lawson

39. Railroad Experience
 Paul Yee—Blood and Iron
 Chinese workers who built BC railroad
 Also the perils of lumbermen of Northwest
 Point of view of 14 year old boy
 Hard work and death
 Chinese laborers on railroad
 https://www.historica-dominion.ca/content/heritage-minutes/nitro?media_type=41&media_category=36

40. Settlement
 W.O. Mitchell—Who Has Seen the Wind
“I would walk to the end of the street and over the prairie with the clickety
grasshoppers bunging in arcs ahead of me, and I could hear the hum and
twang of wind in the great prairie harp of telephone wires. Standing there
with the total thrust of prairie sun on my vulnerable head, I guess I learned —
at a very young age — that I was mortal.”
“And all about him was the wind now, a pervasive sighing trough great
emptiness, as though the prairie itself was breathing in long gusting breaths,
unhampered by the buildings of town, warm and living against his face and in
his hair.”
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjkXOYcNKUQ

41. Women
 Margaret Laurence
 Alberta Women’s Memory Project
 Ella Ritz Zakariasen
http://digicon.athabascau.ca/cgi-
bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/albtwomen&CISOPTR=9462&filename=9457.pdf

43. Immigrants
 Julie Lawson
 Esther Nelson
 Alberta Women’s Memory Project
 Swedish immigrant to Alberta

44. Life on the prairie
 No trees
 Fuel
 Homes
 Fences
 The soddie
 https://www.historica-dominion.ca/content/heritage-
minutes/soddie?media_type=41&media_category=36

45. Nature
 Farley Mowat
Adapted from work of Betsy Arntzen
The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be
This is the story about a dog and his boy. The boy was
the author and the dog was Mutt. Clearly, Mutt
believed that he could do better than just be a dog.
Owls in the Family
A story of a young boy’s pet menagerie – which
includes crows, magpies, gophers and a dog –
growing out of control with the addition of two
cantankerous pet owls, Wol and Weeps.

46. Dear Canada
A series of historical fiction in diary format
By well-known Canadian children’s authors
Theses books, based on historical fact, feature girls ages 9-12
Five have Western Canada Focus
 Isobel Scott (1815) pioneer to Red River
 Harriet Palmer (1862) overland to the Cariboo
 Kate Cameron (1882) railway west
 Chin Mei-ling (1922) Chinese immigrant
 Ivy Weatherall Milorie (1926) immigrant to Saskatchewan

47. Other Historical Fiction
 Berton, Pierre. The Golden Trail
 Campbell, Marjorie Wilkins. The Nor’Westers
 Chalmers, J.W. Red River Adventure
 Hayes, John. F. Buckskin Colonists
 Bugles in the Hills
 Flaming Prairie
 Steel Ribbon
 Quest in the Cariboo
 Hobbs, Will. Jason’s Gold
 Hughes, Monica. Gold Fever Trail
 Longstreth, T. Morris. The Scarlet Force
 McCourt, Edward. Revolt in the West
 Truss, Jan. A Very Small Rebellion
 Wood, Kerry. The Queen’s Cowboy