The West before Lewis and Clark: Three Lives

Speaker: 
Elliott West
 
04 Apr 2012
 
7:00 PM
 
Sun Room, Memorial Union

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Elliott West, Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, is a specialist in the social and environmental history of the American West. His book The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado received five awards, including the Francis Parkman Prize and PEN Center Award. His other books include The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story, The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains, and Growing Up With the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier. West has twice been chosen as the University of Arkansas's teacher of the year and in 2009 was one of three finalists for the Robert Foster Cherry Award recognizing the outstanding teacher in the nation. He earned his PhD from the University of Colorado and joined the faculty at the University of Arkansas in 1979. President Steven Leath will offer opening remarks. The Donald Benson Memorial Lecture in Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Too often standard histories of the American West begin with the journey of Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery in 1804-06. In fact those famous explorers were entering the West during a time of vibrant change. For well more than a century the western story had been one of global exchanges, economic dynamism, and the jockeying of great powers, both Indian and European. My talk will enter this turbulent history, from the 1680s to the time of Lewis and Clarks departure up the Missouri River, through the stories of three individualsa French teenaged boy, a Missouria Indian woman and a young New Mexican mother whose odyssey through five cultures began with her capture by Comanches. Their stories include shipwrecks, a murder and a massacre, Indians hunting rabbits with the king of France, and woodpeckers carrying messages to the stars. They are vivid reminders that the history of the American West is older, richer and even more interesting than most of us realize. The Donald Benson Memorial Lecture in Literature, Science, and the Arts. honors Donald Benson, a former ISU English professor, who had a long-term interest in the relationships among the three intellectual disciplines of literature, science and the arts.