A literary history of the american west literary history ...

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A
LITERARY
HISTORY
OF THE
AMERICAN
WEST

SPONSORED BY
The Western Literature Association

Texas Christian University Press
Fort Worth

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Copyright © 1987 by The Western Literature Association.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Main entry under title:
A Literary history of the American West.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. American literature—West (U.S.)—History and
criticism. 2. West (U.S.) in literature. I. Western
Literature Association (U.S.)
PS271.L58 1986 810'.9'978 85-50538
ISBN 0-87565-021-x

Design by Whitehead & Whitehead

An excerpt from “Estimated Prophet” by John Barlow and Bob Weir is reprinted by permission of
Ice-Nine Publishing Co., Inc. © 1977, 1979 by Ice-Nine Publishing Co., Inc.
An excerpt from “The Night Chant: A Navajo Ceremonial” is reprinted from Four Masterworks
of American Indian Literature, edited and translated by John Bierhorst. © 1974 by John Bierhorst. Re-
printed by permission of John Bierhorst.
“Abiquiu—Thursday in Holy Week” is reprinted from New & Selected Poems by Peggy Pond
Church. © 1976 by Ahsahta Press at Boise State University. Reprinted by permission of Ahsahta Press.
“Tin Cans at Keeler” is reprinted from If There Is Time by Hildegarde Flanner (published 1942 by
New Directions Publishing Corp.). © 1942 by Hildegarde Flanner. Reprinted by permission of Hilde-
garde Flanner.
“The Occultation of Venus” and “Sheep Herding” by Sharlot Hall are reprinted from Women
Poets of the West: An Anthology, 1850–1950. © 1978 by Ahsahta Press at Boise State University. Re-
printed by permission of Ahsahta Press.
An excerpt from Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Parts III & IV by Thomas McGrath is reprinted by
permission of Copper Canyon Press. © 1985 by Thomas McGrath.
“Like Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce” is reprinted from Selected Poems by Norman Macleod. © 1975
by Ahsahta Press at Boise State University. Reprinted by permission of Ahsahta Press.
“Tired” is reprinted from If I Could Sleep Deeply Enough, Poems by Vassar Miller, by permission of
Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974 by Vassar Miller.
“Black Hair” is reprinted from Black Hair by Gary Soto, by permission of the University of
Pittsburgh Press. © 1985 by Gary Soto.
“Watching a Storm” is reprinted from In the Clock of Reason by William Stafford (published 1973
by Soft Press, Victoria, British Columbia). © 1973 William Stafford. Reprinted by permission of
William Stafford.
“Hills Brothers Coffee” is reprinted from Seasonal Woman by Luci Tapahonso (published 1982 by
Tooth of Time Books, Santa Fe, New Mexico). © 1982 Luci Tapahonso. Reprinted by permission of
Luci Tapahonso.



A LITERARY HISTORY of the AMERICAN WEST



BOARD OF EDITORS

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
J. Golden Taylor (1912–1982)
SENIOR EDITOR
Thomas J. Lyon
Utah State University

SECTIONAL EDITORS
George F. Day
University of Northern Iowa
Gerald W. Haslam
Sonoma State University
James H. Maguire
Boise State University

William T. Pilkington
Tarleton State University



CONTENTS

Preface XV
Max Westbrook
Chronology xxi
Richard W. Etulain
PART ONE : Encountering the West
Introduction 3
James H. Maguire
Section I: Oral Traditions
Introduction 8
James H. Maguire
Native Oral Traditions 11
Larry Evers and Paul Pavich
Folklore in the American West 29
Barre Toelken
Section II: The Written Donée of Western Literature
Introduction 68
James H. Maguire
Across the Wide Missouri: The Adventure Narrative
from Lewis and Clark to Powell 71
J. Golden Taylor
The Military 104
Michael Koury
Lawmen and Outlaws 119
Kent L. Steckmesser
Section III: Beginnings of Genres in the West
Introduction 135
James H. Maguire
Precursors of the Western Novel 141
James K. Folsom


A Literary History of the American West

The Western Story 152
Gerald W. Haslam
World Westerns: The European Writer and the American West 159
Richard H. Cracroft
Western Poetry, 1850-–1950 180
Tom Trusky
Western American Drama to 1960 204
James H. Maguire
The Nature Essay in the West 221
Thomas J. Lyon
The Western Movie to 1960 266
Section IV: Beginnings of Literary Historiography
Introduction 273
James H. Maguire
Roosevelt, Wister, Turner, and Remington 276
Ben Merchant Vorpahl
Early Western Literary Scholars 303
Fred Erisman
PART TWO : Settled In: Many Wests
Introduction 319
James H. Maguire
Section I: The Far West
Introduction 326
James D. Houston
Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and the San Francisco Circle 339
Patrick D. Morrow
Mary Hunter Austin 359
Jacqueline D. Hall
Frank Norris 370
Don Graham
Jack London 381
Earle Labor
Robinson Jeffers 398
Robert Brophy
H. L. Davis 416
Paul T. Bryant
John Steinbeck 424
Richard Astro
Theodore Roethke 447
Kermit Vanderbilt

viii


CONTENTS

William Stafford 458
J. Russell Roberts, Sr.
William Saroyan 472
Gerald W. Haaslam
Prophets on the Burning Shore: Jack Kerouac,
Gary Snyder, and San Francisco 482
Dennis McNally
Section II: The Southwest
Introduction 496
The Cowboy in Short Fiction 515
W. H. Hutchinson
The Novel of the Cowboy 523
Lou Rodenberger
J. Frank Dobie 535
Henry L. Alsmeyer, Jr.
Harvey Fergusson 546
Katherine Anne Porter and the Southwest 559
Joan Givner
Oliver La Farge 567
Everett A. Gillis
Paul Horgan 574
Robert Gish
William Eastlake 587
Delbert E. Wylder
Benjamin Capps 597
James W. Lee
Edward Abbey 604
Ann Ronald
Larry McMurtry 612
Jane Nelson
The Southern Border 622
Lou Rodenberger
Section III: The Midwest
Introduction 636
George F. Day
Hamlin Garland and Midwest Farm Fiction 664
Roy W. Meyer
Willa Cather 686
John J. Murphy
Rølvaag and Krause: Two Novelists of the Northwest

ix



Prairie Frontier 716
Arthur R. Huseboe
John G. Neihardt 739
Lucile Aly
The Western Writings of Sinclair Lewis 754
Glen A. Love
Mari Sandoz 764
Helen W. Stauffer
Wright Morris 777
G. B. Crump
Frederick Manfred 792
Robert C. Wright
Thomas McGrath 806
Frederick C. Stern
Robert Bly 813
Douglas Smith
Section IV: The Rocky Mountains
Introduction 822
Levi S. Peterson
Mormon Novels 849
Kenneth B. Hunsaker
Vardis Fisher 862
Louie W. Attebery
“Intellectualoids,” Westering, and Thomas Hornsby Ferril 887
Tom Trusky
Bernard DeVoto 899
Wallace Stegner
A. B. Guthrie, Jr. 912
Wayne Chatterton
Frank Waters 935
Charles L. Adams
Jack Schaefer 958
Fred Erisman
Wallace Stegner 971
Joseph M. Flora
Walter Van Tilburg Clark and the American Dream 989
Max Westbrook
The Northern Boundary 1000
Morton L. Ross

x


CONTENTS

PART THREE : Rediscovering the West

Introduction 1017
Gerald W. Haslam
Section I: Earth Tones: Ethnic Expression in American Literature
Introduction 1026
Gerald W. Haslam
Western American Indian Writers, 1854–1960 1038
A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff
American Indian Fiction, 1968–1983 1058
Paula Gunn Allen
Coyote’s Sons, Spider’s Daughters: Western American
Indian Poetry, 1968-–1983 1067
Patricia Clark Smith
Early Mexican-American Literature 1079
Raymund A. Paredes
Contemporary Mexican-American Literature, 1960–Present 1101
Raymund A. Paredes
Asian-American Literary Traditions 1119
Jeffery Paul Chan and Marilyn Alquiloza
Afro-American Writers in the West 1139
James W. Byrd
Scandinavian Immigrant Literature 1148
Christer Lennart Mossberg
Section II: Present Trends
Introduction 1162
Gerald W. Haslam
Unknown Diversity: Small Presses and Little Magazines
in the West, 1960–1980 1167
Gerald W. Haslam
Trends in Western Women’s Writing 1178
Lou Rodenberger
Contemporary Trends in Western American Fiction 1182
Mark Siegel
Present Trends in Western Poetry 1202
William Lockwood
Contemporary Western Drama 1232
Mark Busby

xi



The Western Nature Essay Since 1970 1246
Thomas J. Lyon
Western Movies Since 1960 1256
Don Graham
The Modern Popular Western: Radio, Television,
Film and Print 1263
Michael T. Marsden and Jack Nachbar
Epilogue: The Development of Western Literary Criticism 1283
Martin Bucco
Major Reference Sources on the West 1317
George F. Day
Contributors 1324
Index 1330

xii



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T HIS WORK WAS MADE POSSIBLE through the assistance of a research
grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Augustana
College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, served as the business office of
the project. Dr. Arthur Huseboe, of Augustana, wrote the original grant
proposal to NEH and administered the resulting funds most efficiently.
At Utah State University, the final gathering and editing of the text
was generously supported by William F. Lye, Vice-President for University
Relations; by Glenn R. Wilde, Associate Dean, College of Humanities,
Arts, and Social Sciences; and by Kenneth B. Hunsaker and Patricia
Gardner, who served as Heads of the English Department during the proj-
ect. Bibliographical research and compilation were handled most compe-
tently by Charlotte Wright. A very great deal of accurate typing, copying,
and proofreading was contributed unstintingly by Patricia Gordon. She was
aided by Anna Marie Ivie.
To all these people and institutions, we owe the existence of this
volume.

xiii



PREFACE

W HEN THE PURITANS set sail to cross the Atlantic, they were not
going to a small, manageable island. Their destination was a con-
tinent, a new world. Their mission, as described with the bias of
European civilization, was to establish a beachhead, a first settlement on
the beginning edge of a land that was enormous, mysterious, frightening,
and challenging. Clearly, the territory later called the American West was
going to play a major role in the development of the nation they hoped to
establish.
The Puritans had little knowledge of what lay beyond their foothold
on the New England coast, but early explorers had told of vast lands,
strange natives, and incredible variety. The continent to the west of
Plymouth and Jamestown, with its millions of undeveloped acres, added
a massive physicality to the Puritan adventure in religious and political
freedom.
As religion receded from politics and democratic capitalism developed,
the West provided opportunities for the poor and temptations to the ex-
ploiter, thus making the American experiment a realistic testing ground for
democracy. A chapter in history began to unfold, a chapter characterized by
such materials as inspire myth-makers. Both marvelous and terrible, the de-
velopment of the West came to be symbolized in the American mind by
pioneering, Indian wars and cattle drives, by the talismanic figure of the
cowboy—a merging of Hispanic and Anglo traditions—by the heroic yet
shameful railroad story, by miners, farmers, and loggers; and, at the end of
the trail, in the promised land of California, there was a pot of gold. Back
east, White House policies and Congressional debates often centered on
the lands and riches of the West. From colonial times to the present day,
recognition of the importance of the West to American history has been
clear and continuous.
The importance of western literature as a part of our national litera-
ture, however, has not been established. With professors and readers of his-
tory, the frontier has always been a respected topic. With professors and

xv



readers of literature, to mention frontier stories is to evoke automatic
thoughts of popular stereotypes. While the term “western history” may sug-
gest Thomas Macaulay, Francis Parkman, Washington Irving, Frederick
Jackson Turner, Henry Nash Smith, Bernard DeVoto, and Richard
Hofstadter, the term “western literature” suggests for most such names as
Owen Wister, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, and various Hollywood actors
from Tom Mix to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.
The contributing authors of A Literary History of the American West
have avoided the polemical trap of a special pleading and concentrated on
presenting and analyzing their assigned topics. Yet one of the major under-
lying purposes of A Literary History of the American West is, by demonstra-
tion rather than defensiveness, to support the ongoing introduction of west-
ern literary riches to readers interested in American literature, culture,
and history.
Admittedly, as always, there are problems in the court of literary eval-
uation. Those who study the literature of the American West tend to be-
lieve there is an entrenched prejudice in favor of minor novels and medi-
ocre poems written amidst the cultural prestige of England or New England
and a prejudice against excellent novels and poems written about the harsh
plains of Nebraska or the unprestigious deserts of Nevada. Still, the West
has produced no William Faulkner, no giant with enough original power to
make prejudicial rankings collapse; and, regrettably, some attempts to de-
fend the worth of serious western literature have been strident attacks on
the eastern establishment or somewhat sentimental praise of the local be-
cause it is local.
Since the founding of the Western Literature Association in 1966,
however, the attitude of teachers and critics of western literature has been
characterized by a disinterest in proselytizing and a confidence in their
chosen field of study. The belief, stated simply, is that the literature of the
American West, although handicapped by association with Hollywood
horse operas and stereotypical paperbacks sold in bus stations, includes a
large body of first-rate literary art. Western literature of quality, much of it
unknown to the reading public, honors the dramatic invitation of western
history. The American West plays an important role in the history of the
nation; western literature, as demonstrated by A Literary History of the
American West, plays an important role in the literature of the nation.
The editorial problem, in fact, has not been how to find western litera-
ture of quality but, rather, how to organize and present an enormous and
remarkably varied body of such literature. The first step, obviously, was to
gather the troops, a group of scholar-critics with a variety of knowledge
equal to the task. The Western Literature Association and its journal—
Western American Literature—provided the forum necessary for identifying

xvi


PREFACE

and organizing over seventy scholars with specializations that include major
writers of the American West, regional literatures and historical periods, a
wide range of genres and literary methods, and literatures written—or
spoken—in languages other than English.
Gathering an appropriate group of scholars turned out to be less diffi-
cult than conceptual questions about the project itself. The history of the
American West has been defined by groups conscious of their own history
but too often unaware or unappreciative of any other history. Anglo pio-
neers, for example, tended to think of themselves as moving into a new
world, that is, one not characterized by their notion of civilization; and yet
up ahead were unknown millions of indigenous citizens, many with an oral
tradition of power and sophistication. Moving into a supposedly new world,
the Anglo pioneer was actually moving into a very old world. Likewise, the
oversimplification of “red” versus “American” ignores long-established His-
panic civilizations in the Southwest and in California, the influence of
French trappers and missionaries, Scandinavian developments in north-
central America, German communities established in Texas and through-
out the West, and the stories of blacks, Asians, and literally dozens of other
ethnic groups.
The assumption that the American West was settled by Anglo pioneers
moving out from gateways such as Independence, Missouri, in fact, needs
reconsideration in the light of theories which emphasize the importance of
the largely Hispanic movements from the south and the importance of
largely Scandinavian movements following a northern route into the Dako-
tas and surrounding territories. Western literature, being concerned with
what happened and with what various people thought was happening,
moves around in history and the history of consciousness in ways that are
difficult for the scholar to map.
The editors have also had to face the fact that regionalism, from the
beginnings to the present day, is intrinsic to the best of western literature as
well as to the mediocre and, often, the worst—the most formulaic. Thus
the editors confronted an old paradox: literary art tends to achieve universal
significance by devotion to a specific locale, a region. Homer, according to
Hamlin Garland, was a regionalist. If Garland’s example of a universal-
regionalist seems extreme, then Henry David Thoreau and William Faulkner
will make the case for him. The problem of a regional literature ambitious
for national and international recognition is, in the present instance, acute.
Among numerous other editorial problems, at least one requires men-
tion. Just as regional, chronological, and ethnic headings do not provide a
neat shape for the literary historian, so does the essential term, western,
refuse to cooperate with the scholar seeking clarity. Definitions in terms of
geography, themes, subject matter, or the residence of the authors have all

xvii



proved unsatisfactory; and attempts to discover a distinctively western style
or vision, while rewarding, are not definitive. The best definitions, perhaps,
are studies in practical criticism which invite further analysis rather than
campaign for an end to analysis.
As the Table of Contents makes clear, the editorial decisions are a se-
ries of compromises. The beginning, certainly, is “Native Oral Traditions,”
even though the concerted and ongoing study of Indian literature is a fairly
recent enterprise.
Other beginnings are explored in essays on the development of various
genres—including poetry and drama—and in essays on types of prose some-
times associated with culture or history rather than literary art. Nature es-
says, for example, are a necessary topic for study because they challenge our
theoretical distinctions between art and non-art and often capture that
sense of place, of land, which is for many the very soul of western literature.
Folklore-and this is true for other literatures—is often the raw material of
formal art; and gunfights and cowboy movies, a sore point for many serious
western artists, are entangled in the minds of writers and readers even if
only as destructive myths in need of purgation. And popular culture, of
course, regardless of artistic merit, is a revealing and important field of
study.
The arrangement of Part Two, although easier to outline than to de-
fend, seemed required by the recurrent emphasis on specific locale. Just as
Faulkner devoted himself to his “postage stamp” of the world and found it
inexhaustible, so have many western writers found a complete world in the
Southwest, the Midwest, the Rocky Mountains. The fourth regional divi-
sion, the Far West, may be a legitimate category for its consistent defiance
of all categories. Historically, the Far West was often the goal of western
expansion, and yet it was also the end of expansion, the place where pio-
neers turned back from the ocean and faced the East. Oregon Territory
loomed in the national psyche as the ultimate in newness, and yet Califor-
nia, the neighboring state, was an old and established civilization. A para-
dise of fertile land and mineral wealth, but also a land of corruption and
violent injustice, the coast as paradox has inspired a number of literary
explosions.
Part Three, “Rediscovering the West, ” is a shift in organizational prin-
ciple required by the fact that so much of the ethnic literature of the Ameri-
can West has received even less recognition than novels and poems by
Anglo writers. The editorial rationale here lies in the history of improving
consciousness rather than the history of the literature itself. Belatedly, there
is a widespread effort to recognize the art of ethnic minorities and a burst of
energy both in criticism and in creativity.
“Present Trends,” a sub-division of Part Three, returns to the principle

xviii


PREFACE

of chronology; but the decision, while a compromise, is not arbitrary. There
is, both in the West and in the nation generally, a small press renaissance in
progress. Major publishers, in part because new owners are less willing than
their predecessors to work for literature as well as profit, are widely believed
to be uninterested in taking a chance on a new writer or on a veteran who
has never had a best seller.
A full description of the small press business has not been written; but
it is well known that while some small presses do not last the season of their
birth, many endure with surprising tenacity. In major cities, and often in
small towns, an enormous number of active and serious publishers and writ-
ers constitute a national small press industry. Although important, the
trend is not exclusive, of course. As made clear in each of several chapters,
many western novelists and even a few poets do enjoy a happy relation with
a major publishing firm, nature writing continues to be an important genre,
and there are quality western films made in major studios.
In the Epilogue, Martin Bucco describes the course of western literary
criticism from its beginnings to the present. He does for western criticism,
in short compass, what George Saintsbury (History of Criticism and Literary
Taste in Europe) and René Wellek (History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950)
have done, on a monumental scale, for comparative criticism.
The need for a literary history of the American West was first expressed
quite casually, over coffee, by various members of the Western Literature
Association. Afterwards, during a plenary session, the idea met with imme-
diate and total agreement. The significance of the apparently innocent in-
ception of this literary history is that scholars and critics of western Ameri-
can literature had already realized the existence of a third stage in the
development of a western literature.
The first stage was the history itself, events culminating, at least in our
consciousness, in a period of about fifty years, roughly the second half of the
nineteenth century. The second stage was the emergence of a large and var-
ied body of literature. The development of a responsible criticism, a move-
ment of the past twenty-five years or so, is the third stage.
Broad generalizations need, of course, the obvious qualifications; but a
surprising amount of the best of western literature has been written in the
twentieth century but set in the nineteenth. Perhaps the historical develop-
ment of the West went forward at such a heady pace that we are, distanced
by time, not as surrogate pioneers but for ourselves, still trying to absorb the
glories, cruelties, and stubborn endurance that characterized the westering
experience.
Along with the continuing effort to understand what has happened,
however, there is a large and increasing number of talented writers who
focus their attention on life in the West as it is today. Appropriately, in

xix



undertaking the writing of a literary history that must confront such long-
running and yet ever-changing concerns, the editors and authors of A Liter-
ary History of the American West believe they have contributed to the begin-
nings of serious study. Far from thinking of this volume as the last word, the
members of the Editorial Board have expressed their hope that the present
undertaking will encourage further work in the literary history of the West.
Relevant to encouragement is the Board’s decision not to impose a
lock-step marching order on contributors in matters of critical approach.
Anyone who reads in this volume will note that some of the chapters are
strongly interpretive, others more general and neutral. This diversity of ap-
proach and tone represents the editors’ recognition of the variety in western
literature, the relative freshness of the West, and—therefore—its invita-
tion to many different types of criticism. Understandably, there are prob-
lems and topics yet to be confronted.
A proper thanks for work done is not possible in an undertaking of this
magnitude. Too many have made important contributions. A complete list,
certainly, would begin with the names in the Table of Contents, those who
did the actual research and writing. The Board of Editors, which changed
during the working process, would come next: the late J. Golden Taylor,
first elected Editor-in-Chief; Thomas J. Lyon, who took up the unfinished
task and saw it through to completion; William T. Pilkington, James
Maguire, and George F. Day, who joined the Board at a time when their
scholarship and industry were essential; and, the editor who served the
longest and deserves a special word of thanks, Gerald Haslam.
Finally, the support of the members of the Western Literature Associa-
tion and a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humani-
ties are gratefully acknowledged, along with thanks to Arthur Huseboe,
who worked patiently and efficiently in securing financial support for the
project.
Literary histories, of course, do not have a reason for being unless there
exists the literature itself. This volume, perhaps more than others of its
kind, is an expression of appreciation for the talented and dedicated literary
artists who ignored the odds, avoided temptations to write for popularity or
prestige, and chose to write honestly about the American West, believing
that experiences long known to be of historical importance are also experi-
ences that need and deserve a literature of importance.

M AX W E S T B R O O K , University of Texas

xx



CHRONOLOGY

I.
A Historical Chronology of the Frontier and
the American West

1507: Western Hemisphere first called America
1513: Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crosses Panama to discover the Pacific Ocean
1540–42: Francisco Vásquez de Coronado explores the interior Southwest
1541–42: Hemando de Soto travels through Arkansas and Oklahoma
1598: Juan de Oñate plants settlements in northern New Mexico
1607: Frontier settlements in Jamestown, Virginia
1609–10: Founding of Santa Fe, New Mexico
1620–21: Pilgrims organize Plymouth, Massachusetts
1630: Boston, Massachusetts, is settled by the Puritans
1673: Pére Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet explore the Great Lakes and
Mississippi Valley
1680: Pueblo Revolt, the Indians drive the Spaniards out of New Mexico
1692: Don Diego de Vargas begins successful reconquest of New Mexico
1706: Founding of Albuquerque, New Mexico
1734: Birth of Daniel Boone (1734–1820), first frontier literary hero
1763: Treaty of Paris ends French and Indian War and cedes French Canada
and trans-Appalachian West to England; Louisiana given to France
1769–70ff: Spanish establish missions from San Diego to the Bay Area
1783: Treaty of Paris ends American Revolution and extends U.S. borders
to the Mississippi River
1803: Louisiana Purchase from France doubles the size of the nation
1804–06: Lewis and Clark expedition, first major exploration into the recently
acquired area of the Louisiana Purchase
1805–07: Zebulon M. Pike explores the Mississippi and Colorado and New
Mexico
1812–15: War of 1812 pushes the British from most of the frontier
1818: Convention of 1818 fixes the U.S.-Canadian border west to the
Rockies
1819, 1821: Transcontinental (Adams-Onís) Treaty provides boundary for Texas,
Nevada, and California
1819–20: Major Stephen H. Long explores the Southwest
1820: Missouri Compromise attempts to solve the growing slavery
controversy

xxi



1821: Mexico wins independence from Spain and assumes control of the
Southwest
Hudson’s Bay Company absorbs its major British competitor, the
North-West Company
Beginning of the Santa Fe Trail
1822: Jedediah Smith ( 1799–1831) makes first of many western explorations
1820s–30s: Halcyon years of the American fur trade and mountain man era in the
Rockies and the Southwest
1830: Organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; pub-
lication of Book of Mormon
1835–36: Texas Revolution and establishment of Republic of Texas (1835–45)
1842: John Charles Frémont makes first of several western explorations
1843: First major groups travel the Oregon Trail to the Pacific Northwest
1845: Annexation of Texas as a state
Journalist John L. O’Sullivan writes about Manifest Destiny
1846: Oregon Country is divided at 49° between U.S. and England (Canada)
1846–47: Mormons leave Nauvoo, Illinois, travel along the Mormon Trail, and
begin to settle in the Salt Lake valley
1846–48: Americans fight and win the Mexican-American War and thereby
wrest control of the Southwest from Mexico
1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo promises to respect Mexican rights in
recently captured areas but fails to do so
1848–49: Gold is discovered in California and thousands flood west to the
mines
1850: California becomes the first far-western state
Compromise of 1850 tries to solve boundary and slave controversies
in the Southwest
1851: Ft. Laramie Treaty, major attempt to make peace with Plains Indians
1853: Gadsden Purchase completes present border between U.S. and
Mexico
Beginning of the bloody struggle over slavery in Kansas and Nebraska
1854: Kansas-Nebraska reignites national slavery controversy
1856: “Bleeding Kansas” results from the struggle over the extension of
slavery
1857–58: The Utah or Mormon “war”
1857: Mountain Meadows Massacre
Establishment of the Overland Mail Company to carry mail to the
West Coast
1858: Completion of the first stagecoach and mail service from Missouri to
California
1858–59: Gold discoveries lead to rushes to Nevada and Colorado
1859: Oregon becomes a state
1859–60: Mining rushes to Nevada, Colorado, and Idaho
1860–61: Pony Express crosses the West
1861: Completion of first telegraph connecting the East and West

xxii


CHRONOLOGY

1861–65: Civil War has large impact on the West although few battles take
place west of the Mississippi
1862: Homestead Act provides inexpensive land for western pioneers
Morrill or Land Grant Act sets aside lands for colleges of agricultural
or mechanical arts
Pacific Railroad Act helps pave the way for transcontinental railway
with generous land grants to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific
railroads
1864: Sand Creek Massacre in which John Chivington and the Colorado
Volunteers destroy a band of Cheyennes
1865–67: Continued battles with the western Sioux
1867: The purchase of Alaska
The Dominion of Canada is established
1868: Founding of University of California, Berkeley
The Overland Monthly begins publication
1869: First transcontinental railroad joins at Promontory Point, Utah
1872: Establishment of Yellowstone National Park, world’s first national
park
1874: Barbed wire fence patented
1876: Battle of the Little Bighorn—Custer’s Last Stand (June 25)
1877: Retreat of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce
Black Exodusters migrate to Kansas
1878: Timber and Stone Act, a land grant for western pioneers
1879: Publication of Henry George’s reformist study Progress and Poverty
1881: Helen Hunt Jackson’s expose of Indian reforms and conditions, A
Century of Dishonor
1882–83: Transcontinental railroads completed to southern California and Pa-
cific Northwest
1885–87: Severe winters in Rockies and Plains destroy thousands of cattle and
many ranchers
1886: Capture of Geronimo ends major wars with Indians
1887: Dawes Severalty (General Allotment) Act attempts to Americanize
Indians through outright gifts of land
1889: Beginning of Oklahoma land booms
1889–91: Ghost Dance and Battle of Wounded Knee end armed conflicts with
Indians
1890: Woodruff Manifesto proclaims end of Mormon polygamy
U.S. Census Bureau announces the closing of the frontier
1891: The Populist Party is established
1892: Sierra Club founded
1893: Severe national depression sweeps through the West
Completion of the Great Northern Railroad from Minnesota to the
Pacific Northwest
Frederick Jackson Turner delivers his key essay “The Significance of
the Frontier in American History”

xxiii



1896: William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan for the presidency
and much of the Populist movement disappears
1897–98: Last major gold rush to the Yukon and Alaska
1898: Sunset Magazine begins as regional West Coast journal
Spanish-American War includes the famous Rough Riders, who were
mostly westerners
1900ff: Carmel, California, and Taos-Santa Fe, New Mexico, begin as no-
table artistic-literary colonies
1902: Oregon institutes initiative and referendum laws
1903: Great Train Robbery, first Western film; produced in New Jersey
1904: A. P. Giannini establishes Bank of Italy in San Francisco, which be-
comes the Bank of America in 1930
1905: Establishment of Industrial Workers of the World, radical labor union
1906: San Francisco earthquake and fire
San Francisco segregates oriental children
1907: Publication of Spirit of American Government, J. Allen Smith’s pro-
gressive treatise
1907–08: “Gentlemen’s Agreement” notes place restrictions on Japanese
immigration
1909–10: Milwaukee Road and Western Pacific, last of the transcontinental
railroads, completed to the Pacific
1910: Election of Hiram Johnson, Progressive governor of California
The Pinchot-Ballinger controversy over conservation policy
1910ff: Hollywood becomes major location for the production of films
1912: Hiram Johnson runs unsuccessfully with Theodore Roosevelt as vice-
presidential candidate of the Progressive Party
1914: William S. Hart stars in his first major Western film
Completion of the Panama Canal, a new route to the West Coast
1914, 1916: U.S. invasions of Mexico
1914–15: Founding of the Non-Partisan League, socialistic political group in
the Rockies and northern Plains
1915: Death of IWW hero, Joe Hill, by firing squad, on a murder charge
1916: Congress authorizes the establishment of a National Park Service
Jeanette Rankin, Montana Congresswoman, first woman elected to
Congress
1917–18: U.S. involvement in World War I brings great socioeconomic changes
to the West
1918: Noted U.S. cultural figure, Mabel Dodge (Luhan), arrives in New
Mexico
1919–20: Western senators Hiram Johnson and William E. Borah lead suc-
cessful fight against Treaty of Paris and League of Nations
1919: Seattle General Strike (February 6–11) attacked by conservatives as
evidence of communist infiltration in the Far West
1920: Nineteenth Amendment ratified, giving vote to women
1920s: Los Angeles becomes the automobile-driving capital of the U.S.

xxiv


CHRONOLOGY

Airplane manufacturing begins on the West Coast
Rapid development of dude ranches in the West
1922: Oregon becomes major stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan
Aimee Semple McPherson builds Angelus Temple in Los Angeles
First one-day, coast-to-coast air flight
1923–24: Teapot Dome oil scandal
1924–28: McNary-Haugen Bill to aid farmers first defeated in Congress and
then twice vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge
1928: First sound motion pictures
Herbert Hoover, first western president, elected
1929: Great Depression strikes the West
1930s: The West experiences the Depression, Dust Bowl, and New Deal
1931: Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, major historical reinterpreta-
tion of the West
Gambling is legalized in Nevada
1933ff: New Deal and its policies profoundly transform the West
1934: Indian Reorganization (Wheeler-Howard) Act revises the Dawes Act
of 1887 and places more emphasis on Indian self-identification
Taylor Grazing Act authorizes policies for open-range grazing
Upton Sinclair loses as Democratic finalist for the governorship of
California (End Poverty in California campaign)
1935: Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates Boulder (Hoover) Dam
1935–40: Federal arts, guides, and theatre projects under the Works Progress
Administration
1939: Release of Stagecoach, the classic John Ford–John Wayne Western
film
1941: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and U.S. joins World War II
1941–45: Economic and social disruptions of World War II transform the West
1942–43: Racial conflicts in Sleepy Lagoon Case and zoot suit riots
1942–44: Internment of Japanese-Americans in detention camps in the interior
West
Henry J. Kaiser builds giant wartime plants in coastal states
1943: First Los Angeles smog
1945: First atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico
United Nations charter written in San Francisco
1940–50s: Beats and North Beach area involved in the San Francisco Renaissance
1948: Beginning of uranium rushes to the Southwest
1950–53: Far West becomes jumping off place for Americans involved in the
Korean War
1952: General Dwight D. Eisenhower, westerner, is elected president
(1953–61)
1958: Alaska admitted to statehood
1959: Hawaii becomes the fiftieth state
1960: Los Angeles third largest U.S. city (population 2,479,015) behind
New York and Chicago

xxv



1962: California surpasses New York as the most populous state
César Chávez organizes the National Farm Workers Association
1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texan Lyndon B.
Johnson becomes president (1963–69)
1964: Two westerners, Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater, compete
for the presidency
Congress enacts the Wilderness Act, creating a National Wilderness
Preservation system
1965: Watts riots in Los Angeles
1968: Californian Richard Nixon wins the presidency (1969–74)
1969: Indians seize and hold Alcatraz as protest against government policies
1970: Organization of the National Indian Youth Council
1973: Confrontation between Indians and government officials at Wounded
Knee, South Dakota
1977–78: Decline and fall of Rev. James Jones and the People’s Temple
1978: California voters uphold Proposition 13, limiting local taxation
measures
1980: “Boat people” and other Southeast Asians move into western U.S.
Los Angeles remains third largest city behind New York and Chicago
Ronald Reagan, former cowboy movie star and California governor,
elected to the White House

xxvi



II.
A Literary Chronology of the American West

During the millennia before the arrival of the Europeans in North America,
a rich oral tradition flourished on this continent. Myths, legends, and songs
were passed from generation to generation.
1510: Las Sergas de Esplandián, by Garcí Rodríguez Ordóñez de Montalvo,
describes California
1539: The image of a golden West is sketched in Report of Fray Marcos de
Niza
1542: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, La Relacion, first captivity narrative
1610: Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá History of New Mexico, verse narrative
1630: Fray Alonso de Benavides, Memorial
1682: Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (better known
as The Narrative of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson), first captivity narrative
in English
1778: Jonathan Carver, Three Years Travels Through the Interior Parts of North-
America
1782: Hector St. Jean de Crévecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, first
notable philosophical consideration of frontier life
1783: John Ledyard, A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific
Ocean
1785: Captain James Cook, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean
1790: John Meares, Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789
1799: Russian explorer A. A. Baranov, “Song,” first poem by a white com-
posed in the West
Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly, early portrait of Indians in
fiction
1801: George Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean
and Round the World
François René de Chateaubriand, Atala, early example of romantic
primitivism
1810: Zebulon M. Pike, An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Missis-
sippi and Through the Western Parts
1814: Nicholas Biddle and Paul Allen edit History of the [Lewis and Clark]
Expedition, first publication of expedition journals
1822: Edwin James, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky
Mountains, chronicle of the Stephen H. Long expedition
1823: James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers, first of the five Leatherstocking
Tales; introduced western hero to England and Europe
1826: Timothy Flint, Francis Berrian, first novel in English set in the
Southwest

xxvii



1827: Timothy Flint begins publication of Western Monthly Review (1827–
30), first magazine published west of the Allegheny Mountains
1829: Tokeah; or, The White Rose by Charles Sealsfield (Karl Postl)
1831: James Ohio Pattie, The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, early
travel narrative of California and the Southwest
1832: Albert Pike, “The Fall of Poland,” in his Prose Sketches and Poems
Written in the Western Country; first poem in English by a white and
composed in the West
1835: Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies
1836: Washington Irving, Astoria
1837: Washington Irving, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville
1839: John K. Townsend, Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains
and the Colorado River to the Sandwich Islands
1840: Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, travel account deal-
ing in part with Spanish California
1841: Das Kajütenbuch (The Cabin Book) by Charles Sealsfield (Karl Postl)
George Catlin, North American Indians
1843: Frederick Marryat, The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur R. Violet in
California, Sonora, and Western Texas
Father Pierre De Smet, Letters and Sketches
Thomas J. Farnham, Travels in the Great Western Prairies
1844: George Wilkins Kendall, Narrative of the Texan-Santa Fé Expedition
Josiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies
1846: John C. Frémont, Narrative of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky
Mountains in the Year 1842
1847: David H. Coyner, The Lost Trappers
1848: Die Flusspiraten des Mississippi (River Pirates of the Mississippi) by
Friedrich Gerstäcker
1849: George Horatio Derby (John Phoenix), first western humorist, arrives
in California
Francis Parkman, The California and Oregon Trail
George Frederick Ruxton, Life in the Far West, Englishman’s views of
mountain men, Indians, and traders
1850: Lewis H. Garrard, Wah-To-Yah and the Taos Trail, classic account of
trapper life by American teenager
Bayard Taylor, El Dorado
1851: The Scalp Hunters by Mayne Reid
1853: Alonzo Delano, Pen Knife Sketches; or, Chips of the Old Block
1854: John Rollin Ridge, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Cele-
brated California Bandit, first novel by a Native American
Margaret Jewett Bailey, The Grains, or Passages in the Life of Ruth
Rover, first novel of the Northwest
Alonzo Delano, Across the Plains and Among the Diggings
1855: Mrs. Maria Ward, Female Life Among the Mormons
1856: George Horatio Derby, Phoenixiana

xxviii



CHRONOLOGY

The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, as dictated to T. D.
Bonner
1857: James G. Swan, The Northwest Coast
Alonzo Delano, A Live Woman in the Mines
1858: Juan Seguín, Personal Memoirs
Les Trppeurs de l’Arkansas (The Trappers of Arkansas) by Gustave
Aimard
1860: Horace Greeley, Overland Journey
Moncure Daniel Conway edits first midwestem little magazine, The
Dial
1861: Der Halbindianer ( The Half-Breed ) by Balduin Möllhausen
1864: J. Ross Browne, Crusoe’s Island
Theodore Winthrop, The Canoe and the Saddle
1865: Mark Twain, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
Charles Farrar Browne, Artemus Ward, His Travels
Outcroppings: Being Selections of California Verse, edited by Bret Harte,
first Far West poetry anthology
1866: Bret Harte and Mark Twain establish themselves in San Francisco
Thomas J. Dimsdale, The Vigilantes of Montana, or Popular Justice in the
Rocky Mountains, early apology for extralegal justice in the West
Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog, and Other Sketches
1868: The Overland Monthly is founded in San Francisco and publishes Bret
Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
1869: Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
John Muir’s first summer in the Sierra
The Luck of Routing Camp and Other Sketches, Bret Harte’s first
collection
1870: Bret Harte, “Plain Language from Truthful James”
1871: Cincinnatus Hiner [Joaquin] Miller, Songs of the Sierras, published in
England
1872: Mark Twain, Roughing It
Clarence King, Mountaneering in the Sierra Nevada
1874: George A. Custer, My Life on the Plains
Nicolai Severin Hassel, Alf Brage eller skolelaereren i Minnesota En
original norsk-amerkansk fortelling (Alf Brage, or the Schoolteacher in
Minnesota: An original Norwegian-American Story), first Norwegian-
American novel
1875: John Wesley Powell, The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its
Tributaries
1876: Dan de Quille (William Wright), The Big Bonanza
1878: Joaquin Miller, The Danites (First Families in the Sierras, 1875)
1879: Arthur Morecamp (Thomas Pilgrim), Live Boys; or Charley and Nasho
in Texas
1881: Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye) founds Laramie Boomerang, a newspaper
outlet for Nye’s comic sketches

xxix



Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains
1883: Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Piutes, first autobiogra-
phy and tribal history by an Indian woman
Mary Hallock Foote, The Led-Horse Claim
E. W. Howe, The Story of a Country Town
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Silverado Squatters
1884: Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona
1885: Charles A. Siringo, A Texas Cow Boy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane
Deck of a Spanish Pony
Elizabeth B. Custer, Boots and Saddles, or Life in Dakota with General
Custer
Kristofer Janson, Praeriens saga (Saga of the Prairies)
1887: Josiah Royce, The Feud of Oakfield Creek
Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
1888: Frances Courtenay Baylor, Juan and Juanita
James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Englishman’s view of
America
1890: Adolph Bandelier, The Delight Makers
1891: Hamlin Garland, Main-Travelled Roads
John Gregory Bourke, On the Border with Crook
1892: Eusabio Chacon, El hijo de la tempestad (Son of the Tempest) and Tras la
tormenta la calma (Calm After the Storm)
1893: Charles F. Lummis, The Land of Poco Tiempo
Karl May, Winnetou
1894: John Muir, The Mountains of California
A. S. Mercer, The Banditti of the Plains
Hamlin Garland, Crumbling Idols
1895: Founding of The Lark, little magazine in San Francisco
The Land of Sunshine, edited by Charles F. Lummis (1895–1909)
The Wave, literary magazine edited by James O’Hara Cosgrave
Carl Hansen, Praeriens børn (Children of the Prairie)
1897: Alfred Henry Lewis, Wolfville
1898: Ernest Thompson Seton, Wild Animals I Have Known
Frank Norris, Moran of the Lady Letty, his first novel
Nephi Anderson, Added Upon
Gertrude Atherton, The Californians
1899: Frank Norris, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco
Edwin Markham, “The Man with the Hoe”
1900: Jack London, The Son of the Wolf, his first book
Francis LaFlesche, The Middle Five, book-length autobiography by
Indian
1901: Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California
John G. Neihardt, “The Divine Enchantment,” his first major poem
1902: Owen Wister, The Virginian
Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa; Sioux), Indian Boyhood

xxx


CHRONOLOGY

Gertrude Atherton, The Splendid Idle Forties
Frederic Remington, John Ermine of the Yellowstone
1903: Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain
Jack London, Call of the Wild and The People of the Abyss
Andy Adams, The Log of a Cowboy
Billy the Kid, play by Walter Woods
1904: John C. Van Dyke, The Desert
Mary Austin, The Basket Woman
1905: Emerson Hough, Heart’s Desire
1906: William Vaughn Moody, The Great Divide
George Wharton James, The Wonders of the Colorado Desert
B. M. Bower (Bertha Sinclair Muzzy), Chip of the Flying U
Thomas Hornsby Ferril, “A Mountain Thought,” first published poem
Early Western Travels, edited by Reuben Thwaites, multivolume col-
lection of major western travel and exploration narratives
1907: O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), Heart of the West
Oliver O. Howard, My Life and Experiences Among Our Hostile Indians
1908: Martha Summerhayes, Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life
of a New England Woman
1909: Founding of Texas Folklore Society
Jack London, Martin Eden
Frances M. A. Roe, Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife
Enos Mills, Wild Life on the Rockies
1910: Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Good Men and True
1911: Sharlot Hall, Cactus and Pine, collection of western poems
1912: Robinson Jeffers, Flagons and Apples, first volume of poems
Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage
John Muir, The Yosemite
Ole Rølvaag, Amerika-Breve (Letters from America), first novel
1913: Willa Cather, O Pioneers!, her first farm novel
Oscar Micheaux, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer, first
novel by a black in the West
1914: Robinson Jeffers moves to Carmel, California, with his new wife Una
Osborne Russell, Journal of a Trapper, notable mountain man
document
1915: Founding of Midland, regional literary magazine, by John T. Frederick
Harry Leon Wilson, Rugggles of Red Gap
Southwest Review begins publication (Texas Review, 1915–24)
John G. Neihardt publishes first Song of Epic Cycle of the West (other
four Songs in 1919, 1925, 1935, 1941)
Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
1916: Charles A. Eastman (Sioux), From the Deep Woods to Civilization
1917: Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border
Mary Hallock Foote, Edith Bonham
1918: Willa Cather, My Ántonia

xxxi



1919: Will Rogers (Cherokee), Rogers-isms: The Cowboy Philosopher on the
Peace Conference and Rogers-isms: The Cowboy Philosopher on
Prohibition
H. L. Davis wins Levinson Prize for poems in Poetry: A Magazine of
Verse
1920: Alice Corbin (Henderson), Red Earth, an early volume drawing on
Indian and Hispanic traditions of the Southwest
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
1921: Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Stepsons of Light
Hamlin Garland, A Daughter of the Middle Border, wins Pulitzer Prize
Harvey Fergusson, Blood of the Conquerors
1922: Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
Dame Shirley (Louise A. K. S. Clappe), The Shirley Letters, edited by
Thomas Russell; important source on Gold Rush camps
Harry Leon Wilson, Merton of the Movies
1923: Emerson Hough, North of 36
Willa Cather wins Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922)
Mary Austin, The American Rhythm
Land of Sunshine merges with Overland Monthly
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady
1924: Sidney Howard, They Knew What They Wanted
Mary Austin, The Land of Journeys’ Ending
Robinson Jeffers, Tamar and Other Poems; reprinted as Roan Stallion
and Other Poems (1925)
1925: Willa Cather, The Professor’s House
Frederic Logan Paxson, History of the American Frontier, wins Pulitzer
Prize for history
Dorothy Scarborough, The Wind
Martha Ostenso, Wild Geese, her first novel of prairie farm life
Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith, wins Pulitzer Prize for fiction
1926: Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Pasó por Aquí
Thomas Hornsby Ferril, High Passage, wins Yale Younger Poets Award
Susan Shelby Magoffin, Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico
Will James, Smoky, the Cow Horse
Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid
1927: Ole Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth, first published in English
Mourning Dove, Co-ge-we-a, first novel by an Indian woman
Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, classic
interpretation from western populistic perspective
Upton Sinclair, Oil, first major novel on oil industry
Frontier begins as regional magazine, H. G. Merriam as editor
Prairie Schooner begins publication at the University of Nebraska
Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Heavenly Discourses
Harvey Fergusson, Wolf Song

xxxii


CHRONOLOGY

1928: Vardis Fisher, Toilers of the Hills, first novel and first in Antelope Hills
series
Lynn Riggs, A Lantern to See By
1929: J. Frank Dobie, A Vaquero of the Brush Country
Oliver La Farge, Laughing Boy, wins Pulitzer Prize
Folk-Say: A Regional Miscellany, notable regional collection, B. A.
Botkin, editor
Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry
1930: Frances Gillmor, Windsinger
Edna Ferber, Cimarron
Sinclair Lewis becomes first American writer to be awarded a Nobel
Prize
Max Brand (Frederick Faust), Destry Rides Again
J. Frank Dobie, Coronado’s Children, folk tales of the Southwest
Writers’ Editions cooperative of Santa Fe begins publishing south-
western works
Katherine Anne Porter, Flowering Judas, first collection of short
stories
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon, first Sam Spade novel
1931: New Mexico Review begins, T. M. Pearce and Dudley Winn, editors
Ole Rølvaag, Their Fathers’ God, his final prairie novel
Lynn Riggs (Cherokee), Green Grow the Lilacs, play from which the
musical Oklahoma was made
Robert Cantwell, Laugh and Lie Down
1932: Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain’s America, sets off argument with Van
Wyck Brooks on Mark Twain, the West, and American culture
John Joseph Mathews (Osage), Wah’ Kon-Tah
Mary Austin, Earth Horizon
Maxwell Anderson, Night over Taos
John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks
1933: Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of Sections in American His-
tory, wins Pulitzer Prize for history
Robinson Jeffers, Give Your Heart to the Hawks
T. M. Pearce and Telfair Hendon, eds., America in the Southwest: A
Regional Anthology
The Lone Ranger, WXYZ Radio, Detroit
1934: Robert Cantwell, The Land of Plenty
Ruth Suckow, The Folks
William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and
Other Stories, his first collection
Thomas Hornsby Ferril, Westering
1935: Paul Horgan, No Quarter Given, his first novel about the Southwest
Bernard DeVoto begins his twenty-one-year stint as writer of the Easy
Chair column in Harper’s
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie

xxxiii



Robert E. Sherwood, The Petrified Forest
Mari Sandoz, Old Jules, wins Atlantic Non-Fiction Prize
H. L. Davis, Honey in the Horn, wins Harper Prize 1935; Pulitzer Prize
1936
John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
Overland Monthly ceases publication
George Stewart, Bret Harte: Argonaut and Exile
1936: John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle
Sophus Winther, Take All to Nebraska, first of three novels about
Americans on the frontier
Bernard DeVoto begins brief stint as editor of Saturday Review of Liter-
ature (1936-38)
Lynn Riggs, Cherokee Night, first play by Indian writer on an Indian
subject
D’Arcy McNickle, The Surrounded
George Milburn, Catalogue: A Novel
1937: Conrad Richter, The Sea of Grass
E. P. Conkle, Two Hundred Were Chosen
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Wallace Stegner, Remembering Laughter, his first novel wins the Little,
Brown novelette prize
Oliver La Farge, The Enemy Gods
Intermountain Review (later Rocky Mountain Review and Western Re-
v i e w) begins publication, edited by Ray B. West
1938: Mabel Major, Rebecca Smith, and T. M. Pearce, eds., Southwest
Heritage
Robinson Jeffers, Selected Poetry
John Steinbeck, The Long Valley
1939: William Attaway, Let Me Breathe Thunder
William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life, wins Pulitzer Prize (1940) but
he declines the award
Paul Corey, Three Miles Square, first of Mantz trilogy
Vardis Fisher, Children of God, wins Harper Prize
Franklin Walker, San Francisco’s Literary Frontier
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, wins Pulitzer Prize
Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider
J. Frank Dobie’s Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver wins first Texas Institute
of Letters award for best book by a Texan
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Fields, revisionist study of farm
workers
William Everson, San Joaquin
Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

xxxiv


CHRONOLOGY

Joseph Henry Jackson, Bad Company
1940: Yvor Winters, Poems
Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident
William Saroyan, My Name is Aram
Judy Van Der Veer, November Grass
Alan Swallow publishes first book: Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn
Warren, eds., Signets: An Anthology of Beginnings
Edward and Charles Weston, California and the West
Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely
Paul Bailey, For This My Glory
John Steinbeck and Edward Ricketts, Sea of Cortez
1941: J. Frank Dobie, The Longhorns
Kenneth Rexroth, In What Hour, first poetic collection
Frank Waters, People of the Valley
George R. Stewart, Storm
Maurine Whipple, The Giant Joshua
1942: Frank Waters, The Man Who Killed the Deer
Wright Morris, My Uncle Dudley, his first novel
J. Frank Dobie, Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest
Idwal Jones, The Vineyard
William Saroyan, The Human Comedy
Robert Easton, The Happy Man
Virginia Sorensen, A Little Lower Than the Angels
1943: Wallace Stegner, The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake
1944: Bernard DeVoto, The Literary Fallacy, precipitates controversy with
Sinclair Lewis
J. Frank Dobie, A Texan in England
Feike Feikema (Frederick Manfred), The Golden Bowl
Ernest Haycox, Bugles in the Afternoon
1945: John Joseph Mathews (Osage), Talking to the Moon
George R. Stewart, Names on the Land
Josephina Niggli, Mexican Village
Oliver La Farge, Raw Material, an autobiographical account
Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The City of Trembling Leaves
Khatchik Minasian wins Edwin Markham Gold Medal for Poetry
Arizona Quarterly begins, Albert R. Gregenheimer founding editor
Promised Land, edited by Stewart Holbrook, Northwest regional
anthology
James Stevens, Big Jim Turner
Great Tales of the American West, edited by Harry E. Maule
John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Luke Short (Frederick Glidden), And the Wind Blows Free
1946: Frank Waters, The Colorado

xxxv



Southwesterners Write, eds. T. M. Pearce and A. P. Thomason
Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660, first major work on Japanese-American
relocation camp experiences.
Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart, first major book by a Filipino-
American
1947: Herbert Krause, The Thresher
Feike Feikema (Frederick Manfred), This Is the Year
Frank Waters, The Yogi of Cockroach Court
Mario Suárez’s first story appears in Arizona Quarterly
Western Humanities Review, Jack Garlington founding editor
A. B. Guthrie, The Big Sky
1948: Bernard DeVoto, Across the Wide Missouri, wins Pulitzer Prize for
history
Wright Morris, The Home Place
Forrester Blake, Johnny Christmas
Theodore Roethke, The Lost Son and Other Poems
Robinson Jeffers, The Double Ax
Samuel W. Taylor, Heaven Knows Why
George R. Stewart, Fire
1949: Tom Lea, The Brave Bulls
Jack Schaefer, Shane
Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Track of the Cat
A. B. Guthrie, The Way West, wins Pulitzer Prize
1950: Frank Waters, Masked Gods
Franklin Walker, A Literary History of Southern California
Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and
Myth
Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Watchful Gods and Other Stories
Khatchik Minasian, The Simple Songs of Khatchik Minasian, first poetry
collection
Harvey Fergusson, Grant of Kingdom
Wallace Stegner, Women on the Wall, first short story collection
1951: A. Grove Day, The Sky Clears: Poetry of the American lndian
1952: Bernard DeVoto, The Course of Empire
Tom Lea, The Wonderful Country
John Houghton Allen, Southwest
Thomas Hornsby Ferril, New and Selected Poems
Joseph Wood Krutch, The Desert Year
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Edna Ferber, Giant
Ernest Haycox, The Earthbreakers, the last written of his many novels
J. Frank Dobie, The Mustangs
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier
1953: William Inge, Picnic, wins Pulitzer Prize for drama
Jack Schaefer, The Canyon

xxxvi


CHRONOLOGY

J. Mason Brewer, The Word on the Brazos
Louis L’Amour, Hondo, his first well-known Western
H. L. Davis, Team Bells Woke Me and Other Stories
Dorothy M. Johnson, Indian Country, a collection of stories
1954: Thomas McGrath, Figures from a Double World, wins Alan Swallow
Award
Paul Horgan, Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History,
wins Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes for history
Frederick Manfred, Lord Grizzly
Theodore Roethke, The Waking, wins Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
Alan Le May, The Searchers
Harvey Fergusson, The Conquest of Don Pedro
1955: William Inge, Bus Stop
Six Poets at the Six Gallery: Kenneth Rexroth, Philip Lamantia,
Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Allen
Ginsberg
1956: Wright Morris, The Field of Vision, wins National Book Award (1957)
W. H. Hutchinson, A Bar Cross Man
William Eastlake, Go in Beauty
Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems
A. B. Guthrie, These Thousand Hills
Fred Gipson, Old Yeller
Edward Abbey, The Brave Cowboy
1957: William Inge, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Jack Schaefer, Company of Cowards
Northwest Review begins publication
John Okada, No-No Boy, major work on Japanese-American reloca-
tion camp
Robert Laxalt, Sweet Promised Land, first major work on American
Basques
Blue Cloud Quarterly, literary magazine, begins publication, Brother
Benet Tuedten editor
Frederick Manfred, Riders of Judgment
Dorothy M. Johnson, The Hanging Tree, a collection of stories
Shig Murao and Lawrence Ferlinghetti arrested for selling “obscene”
Howl
1958: San Francisco columnist Herb Caen coins term “Beatnik”
Theodore Roethke, Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse of Theodore
Roethke, wins Bollingen Prize
José Antonio Villarreal, Pocho, first important Chicano novel
The Book of Negro Folklore, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna
Bontemps
William Eastlake, The Bronc People

xxxvii



Wright Morris, The Territory Ahead
1959: The Wormwood Review, Marvin Malone, publisher
Frederick Manfred, Conquering Horse
Gary Snyder, Riprap, first collection of poems
1960: Jack Schaefer, Old Ramon
Don Berry, Trask
Wright Morris, Ceremony in Lone Tree
Poetry Northwest begins publication
Paul Horgan, A Distant Trumpet
E. L. Doctorow, Welcome to Hard Times
Will Henry (Henry Wilson Allen), From Where the Sun Now Stands
John Graves, Goodbye to a River
1961: Larry McMurtry, Horseman Pass By, his first novel
The Outsider magazine founded by Jon and Louise Webb
John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me
William Brammer, The Gay Place, first novel
1962: John Steinbeck is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
Don Berry, Moontrap
William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark, wins the National Book
Award for Poetry (1963)
Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
A Country in the Mind, edited by Ray B. West
Upton Sinclair, Autobiography
Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds
Ken Kesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Edward Abbey, Fire on the Mountain
1963: Frank Waters, Book of the Hopi
Jack Schaefer, Monte Walsh
William Eastlake, Portrait of an Artist with Twenty-Six Horses
South Dakota Review begins publication, John R. Milton, editor
Virginia Lee, The House That Tai Ming Built
1964: Benjamin Capps, The Trail to Ogallala
J. Frank Dobie, Cow People
Theodore Roethke, The Far Field, posthumous
The Western Review begins publication
Thomas Berger, Little Big Man
Thomas McGrath, New and Selected Poems
Frederick Manfred, Scarlet Plume
Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
Sam Shepard, Cowboys, first play begins off Broadway
1965: Katherine Anne Porter, The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter,
wins Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award ( 1966)
Luis Valdez founds El Teatro Campesino
Joan Didion, Run River, her first novel
Oliver La Farge, The Door in the Wall, a collection of short stories

xxxviii


CHRONOLOGY

lnternational Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses, published
by Len Fulton and Ellen Ferber
Organization of the Western Literature Association
Vardis Fisher, Mountain Men
1966: Frank Waters, The Woman at Otowi Crossing
Western American Literature begins publication, J. Golden Taylor and
Delbert E. Wylder, founding editors
James K. Folsom, The American Western Novel
Thomas Hornsby Ferril, Words for Denver
Theodore Roethke, The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show
1967: Publication of Southwest Writers Series, edited by James W. Lee
(1967–74)
William Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, wins Pulitzer Prize for
history
Jack Schaefer, Mavericks
COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers)
founded in Berkeley by Len Fulton and Jerry Bums
Ishmael Reed, The Free-lance Pallbearers, first novel
Small Press Review begins publication, edited by Len Fulton
Southwest Writers Anthology, edited by Martin Shockley
Gerald Locklin, Sunset Beach, first poetry collection
Gary Snyder, The Back Country
Robert Bly, The Light Around the Body, wins National Book Award for
poetry ( 1969)
Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America
Wright Morris, In Orbit
1968: Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Leslie Fiedler, The Return of the Vanishing American
American Negro Folklore, edited by J. Mason Brewer
Richard Bradford, Red Sky at Morning
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn, first novel, wins Pulitzer
Prize (1969)
1969: Frank Waters, Pumpkin Seed Point
Vine Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins
Leonard Gardner, Fat City, first novel
James D. Houston, Gig, first novel
The American Indian Speaks in Poetry, Fiction, Art, Music, Commen-
tary, landmark anthology edited by John R. Milton
Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water
Gary Snyder, Earth House Hold
1970: Thomas McGrath, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Part I and II
Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays
A. B. Guthrie, Arfive
Paul Horgan, Whitewater

xxxix



1971: Founding of Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, David D.
Anderson and others
Frank Waters, Pike’s Peak
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose, wins Pulitzer Prize (1972)
John Cawelti, The Six-Gun Mystique
Wright Morris, Fire Sermon
First issue of Southwestern American Literature published
The Literature of the American West, edited by J. Golden Taylor
Lawrence Clark Powell, California Classics
Lawson Inada, Before the War, first collection of poems
Down at the Santa Fe Depot, edited by David Kherdian and James
Baloian
Tomás Rivera, “. . . y no se lo tragó la tierra,” first novel
Paul Foreman founds Thorp Springs Press
Elmer Kelton, The Day the Cowboys Quit
1972: Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima
Hanay Geiogamah, Body Indian, opens
John Seelye, The Kid
Frank Chin, The Chickencoop Chinaman, is staged
Thomas McGrath, The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems
Boise State College Western Writers Series begins, edited by Wayne
Chatterton and James H. Maguire
Ann H. Zwinger (with Beatrice Willard), Land Above the Trees: A
Guide to American Alpine Tundra
George Keithly, The Donner Party, first poetry book
Larry Levis, The Wrecking Crew, first collection of poems, wins U.S.
Award from International Poetry Forum
1973: Elmer Kelton, The Time It Never Rained
Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan
Wright Morris, A Life
Gerald Haslam, Okies, first collection of stories
Frank Bidart, Golden State, first poetry collection
Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream 1850–1915
Arna Bontemps, The Old South
Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, The Carousel Would Haunt Me, first po-
etry collection
Rolando Hinojosa-S[mith], Estampas del valle y otras obras, first collec-
tion of stories
William T. Pilkington, My Blood’s Country
Paul Foreman, Redwing Blackbird, first poetry collection
Richard Hugo, The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir
1974: Copper Canyon Press founded by Sam Hamill and Tree Swenson
Art Cuelho, The Last Inch of Shade, first poetry collection
Miguel Méndez, Peregrinas de Aztlán
Western Writing, edited by Gerald Haslam

xl


CHRONOLOGY

Arnold R. Rojas, These Were the Vaqueros
Len Fulton, The Grassman, first novel
Lawrence Clark Powell, Southwest Classics
The Man to Send Rain Clouds, edited by Kenneth Rosen; short story
collection of contemporary American Indian writers
Hector Lee, Tales of California
Gary Snyder, Turtle Island, wins Pulitzer Prize (1975)
John Nichols, The Milagro Beanfield War
James Welch, Winter in the Blood
Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio: From the Thirties
1975: Laurence Yep, Dragonwings
Jack Schaefer, An American Bestiary
Ron Arias, The Road to Tamazunchale
Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang
Paul Horgan, Lamy of Santa Fe, wins Pulitzer Prize (1976) for history
Literature of the American Indian: Views and Interpretations, first an-
thology of critical essays dealing with American Indian literature
Aiiieeeee !: An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, edited by Frank
Chin, et al.
The Western Story: Fact, Fiction and Myth, edited by Philip Durham
and Everett L. Jones
Larry McMurtry, Terms of Endearment
1976: Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird, wins National Book Award
David Wagoner, Collected Poems
Preston Jones, A Texas Trilogy, opens on Broadway
William Everson, Archetype West
Luis Valdez, La Carpa de los Rasquachis
El Teatro Campesino performs in Europe
Gerald Locklin, The Chase, first novel
Phantasm founded by Larry Jackson
1977: Southwest: A Contemporary Anthology, edited by Karl and Jane Kopp
William Stafford, Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Poems
Paul Horgan, The Thin Mountain Air
Gary Soto, The Elements of San Joaquin, first collection of poetry
Leslie Silko, Ceremony
Gary Witherspoon, Language and Art in the Navajo Universe
Richard Hugo, 31 Letters and 13 Dreams
Dick Harrison, Unnamed Country: The Struggle for a Canadian Prairie
Fiction
Robert Day, The Last Cattle Drive
1978: William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl
Sam Shepard, Buried Child, wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama
Luis Valdez, Zoot Suit
California Heartland, regional anthology edited by Gerald Haslam and
James D. Houston

xli



Women Poets of the West: An Anthology 1850–1950, edited by
A. Thomas Trusky
Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men
Elmer Kelton, The Good Old Boys
C. L. Sonnichsen, From Hopalong to Hud: Thoughts on Western Fiction
Ivan Doig, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
1979: Chester Seltzer, The Stories of Amado Muro
Lanford Wilson, Tulley’s Folly, wins Pulitzer Prize for drama
Jessamyn West, The Life I Really Lived
Marilyn Brown, The Earthkeepers
Wallace Stegner, Recapitulation
Dick Harrison, Crossing Frontiers: Papers in American and Canadian
Western Literature
1980: Wright Morris, Plains Song, wins American Book Award
Sam Shepard, True West, opens off Broadway
Southwestern American Literature: A Bibliography, edited by John Q.
Anderson, et al.
Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men
John R. Milton, The Novel of the American West
1981: Don D. Walker, Clio’s Cowboys: Studies in the Historiography of the
Cattle Trade
Frank Waters, Mountain Dialogues
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Southwest: Toward the Twenty-First Century, edited by Karl and Jane
Kopp
A Bibliographical Guide to Midwestern Literature, edited by Gerald C.
Nemanic
Wayne Ude, Becoming Coyote, first novel
1982: Wright Morris wins Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service
in Literature
William Stafford, A Glass House in the Rain
Thomas McGrath, Passages Toward the Dark
Richard Dokey, August Light
Ivan Doig, The Sea Runners
Texas Books in Review, edited by William T. Pilkington, begins
Levi S. Peterson, The Canyons of Grace, first short story collection
Fifty Western Writers, edited by Fred Erisman and Richard W. Etulain
A. B. Guthrie, Fair Land, Fair Land
A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Western American Literature,
compiled by Richard W. Etulain
Larry McMurtry, Cadillac Jack
Thomas McGuane, Nobody’s Angel
Lanford Wilson, Angels Fall
Wallace Stegner, One Way to Spell Man
Lou Halsell Rodenberger, ed., Her Work: Stories by Texas Women

xlii


CHRONOLOGY

1983: David James Duncan, The River Why
Louis L’Amour first novelist to be given a special National Gold
Medal by Congress
Historians and the American West, edited by Michael P. Malone
The Woman Who Owned the Shadows, first feminist American Indian
novel published by feminist press, Spinsters Ink
Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski, Encyclopedia of Frontier and Western
Fiction
1984: Joan Didion, Democracy
Douglas Unger, Leaving the Land
Westward the Women: An Anthology of Western Stories by Women,
edited by Vicki Piekarski

R ICHARD W. ETULAIN , University of New Mexico

xliii



Part One
ENCOUNTERING THE WEST



INTRODUCTION

I N THE LAST LINES
writes:
of “Axe Handles,” the western poet Gary Snyder

And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.
The craft of culture in the American West, as in any land, is not limited by
provincial examples, for as Snyder’s poem demonstrates, those who practice
a craft can look to any culture for their models. Yet because most artists
encounter their first models close to home, the first part of A Literary His-
tory of the American West begins with the stories told in and the reports
about the Old West. There are also chapters surveying the history of those
genres brought to the West before 1890 but not well rooted here until after
the Second World War. In short, the first stage in the literary history of the
West is the literature of the frontier. The history of every literature, of
course, begins with such a stage. That is how we go on.
In 1890, when the U.S. Census Bureau announced the closing of the
frontier, the belles-lettres of the American West were still in a nascent state.
Nevertheless, the roots of western literature are centuries old. Although
many computer-age westerners may be unaware of the West’s rich pre-
twentieth-century heritage, most contemporary western writers draw upon
it for subjects, themes, and characters. Western literature written before
1890 is to the West what pre-1800 literature is to America.
Every literature begins with such a seedtime, which can be profitably
studied both for its own sake and for what it reveals about the work that
grows from it. The seedtime of western American literature began with the
oral tradition of people who had arrived in North America thousands of
years ago. Europeans, after encountering the West and its inhabitants,

3



added letters, reports, diaries, and journals to the West’s literary heritage.
That literature of early encounters proceeded in stages: Spanish and French
before 1800; then, starting with Lewis and Clark, American exploration up
to the Civil War; and scientific cataloguing of the land and the natives from
the end of the Civil War into the new century. From the time of first settle-
ment, Europeans and, later, Americans began to write about the West in
the various genres of European literature. And even before American settle-
ment in the West, a western literary criticism had started to grow.
The first of those disparate sources of western American literature is
the oral tradition of the Native Americans. It probably began with the ar-
rival of people on this continent some 30,000 years ago. When people be-
gan to paint pictures of bison upon the cave walls at Lascaux in Europe,
other humans were telling stories about giant bison in what is now the
West. American Indians had sung the glories of the land centuries before
Columbus sailed; some of their songs and stories survived and now inspire
many contemporary western writers. With that oral tradition this literary
history begins. A tradition so apparently far removed from our usual notions
of belles-lettres may seem an odd beginning, but the reader should recall that
European literature began with the oral tradition which culminated in
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
Into that European literature came reports of the lands that Columbus
and his sailors had reached. Long before the Lewis and Clark expedition,
western wilderness acted as a lodestone for explorers and philosophers. As
Howard Mumford Jones explains in O Strange New World (1964), the earli-
est European immigrants arrived in America with preconceived, conflicting
notions about the wild new lands: they had heard ( I) that the wilderness
was a new Garden of Eden and (2) that it was an earthly hell. Perhaps the
noble natives would freely give you mountains of gold; but if you stayed in
the New World’s strange wild vastness for too long, you might degenerate,
losing all your civilized traits and sinking to the level of the cannibalistic
savage. (Europeans often forgot that their own civilization offered examples
of behavior that made a cannibal look kind.) ,
One of the first Europeans to encounter the West, Álvar Núñez Cabeza
de Vaca traveled with three companions through parts of the Southwest in
the 1530s, and his narrative of their adventures appeared in print in 1542.
After Cabeza de Vaca came other Spanish explorers: Marcos de Niza ( 1539),
Coronado (1540), Rodriguez-Chamuscado (1581), Espejo (1582), Castaño
de Sosa (1590), and Humaña-Bonilla (1594). To the reports of their expe-
ditions were added accounts of early Spanish settlement, beginning with
Juan de Oñate’s expedition in 1598. The year when Santa Fe was founded,
1610, also saw the publication of the poetic chronicle History of New Mex-

4


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