Copyright (c) 2009 University of Nebraska - Lincoln All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss Recent documents in Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History en-us Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:39:19 PDT 3600 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/24 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/24 Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:39:36 PDT Many historical accounts of the restoration of the American bison omit an important piece of that phenomenon. Most historians have focused their attention on two elements: western ranchers who started the earliest private herds and eastern conservationists who raised funds and lobbied for the creation of the first national preserves. However, the perpetuation of the image of buffalo in the hearts and minds of Americans was equally important in the eventual recovery of the species. No one was a more effective popularizer than William F. Cody, despite his belief that bison neither could nor would recover. Buffalo Bill's Wild West exposed millions of North Americans and Europeans to live buffalo; it provided a market for fledgling buffalo ranchers; and, to a lesser degree, the Wild West raised awareness of the precariously low population of American bison. Cody's exhibitions were important beyond the sheer number of people they attracted. The Wild West rose in popularity at the very moment that bison in North America verged on extinction. David Nesheim http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/23 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/23 Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:56:26 PDT The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May of 1854 formally opened a new region of the United States to settlers. Hundreds came with news of the creation of Nebraska Territory, but not in comparable numbers to the major western migrations that would follow after the Civil War. Instead, the initial small waves of Nebraska settlers would cling to the Missouri River and its settlements establishing communities on the eastern edges in the newly opened territory. These first settlers set the foundations for culture and society in Nebraska.From 1854 until 1860, pioneers claimed lands near the Missouri, with few towns founded in the territorial interior. The initial settlements of Nebraska Territory also grouped around areas previously inhabited by whites such as the Indian mission and fur traders at Bellevue, the old Fort Kearney (Nebraska City), and the Mormon Winter Quarters near Florence. Coming mostly from northern states, these new settlers included a variety of farmers, merchants and laborers.It was into this area that "home" missionaries and ministers were sent. Men went to the frontier or white civilization to bring the gospel message to their fellow American citizens in an effort to "save the West," and thus Nebraska, from what easterners believed to be barbarism. Men came to Nebraska Territory from Protestant churches to win over the unconverted and to maintain a Victorian way of life for the good of the nation in a grand patriotic gesture. This cohort of missionaries came from several distinct denominations, but instead of competing, as was the tendency in the East, they cooperated. Instead of choosing to squabble interdenominationally, they rallied against the threat of irreligion, and what they considered to be sects - Campbellism and Mormonism. Campbellites, as the followers of Thomas and Alexander Campbell were sometimes derisively called by mainstream Protestant denominations, began with strong antidenominationalism and relied heavily on the theology of Alexander Campbell. He insisted on the maxim, "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent," which led to and estrangement with other denominations and the foundation of a denomination for "Christians," "Reformers," or simply "Disciples." Mormons, following the teachings of Joseph Smith and the leadership of Brigham Young, had traveled through pre-territorial Nebraska on their way to settling by 1850 in the Great Salt Lake Valley and were sending missionaries elsewhere to draw more people into their church. The Campbellites and Mormons were self-identified outsiders, alienating themselves by insisting that their interpretations of religion were correct and all others were wrong. Thus, to Protestants ministers were needed to win over and shape the American frontier and maintain an American national identity they defined to embody morality and civilization. These men worked to build the moral and social groundings upon which Protestants believed "good" people needed in order to establish themselves within the new territory. The era of settlement from the opening of Nebraska Territory until the Civil War has not attracted much historical attention. It might be assumed from reading various texts on the history of the American West that nothing occurred in Nebraska until statehood and the railroad. Instead considerable settlement occurred with a new social foundation. In particular, several Protestant ministers entered Nebraska from 1854 until 1860, and they quickly secured a presence and influence on the development of Nebraska's frontier culture and society. Three ministers represent this important development. Reuben Gaylord, a Congregationalist minister, settled in Omaha, Nebraska Territory, after working in Iowa Territory. Henry T. Davis, a Methodist circuit rider who traveled through Nebraska on his way to the gold fields of California as a young man, returned to Nebraska as a minister once he personally "found religion." And Amos Billingsley, an Old School Presbyterian minister, initially settled in Florence and then later moved to Brownville, where he established a church only to move on to the Colorado mines in 1861. These home missionaries revealed their concern for how they spent their time. All three missionaries expressed the need to account for their time, of which the most bold was Rev. Amos Billingsley. On the title page of his diary, in large, bold print is "Redeem the Time." More than a simple Victorian preoccupation with time management, these ministers felt responsible to God for how they spent their time.Each of these men recorded their personal accounts and recollections in some form: Billingsley left a diary, Gaylord wrote letters to his sponsoring agency, and Davis wrote an autobiography of his ministry in Nebraska. They recorded their temporal investments as a way to "redeem the time." The similar experiences that these men shared despite being from different denominations in a time of notorious national denominational strife are startling. Personal accounts of difficulties, both physical and mental are common in their writings, but each of the ministers took on a spiritual burden unique to their profession, bringing out a depth of personal character. Unlike the many men who came west in an extractive effort, these ministers sought to invest in the lives of the men and women leading the immigrant vanguard and to become spiritual anchors by which to hold back the rambunctious nature of a frontier people, all the while revealing their spiritual needs. Seeking souls for conversion, the ministers set out for Nebraska Territory along different routes, each with a similar destination. These ministers preceded a call for ministers following the Civil War that resulted in large Protestant migrations. Instead of Lutherans and Baptists, these men were Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Methodist. Their churches did not gain large numbers - at least during this period - so their actual influence is difficult to quantify. Choosing the professional ministry, these men did not supplement their incomes through farming or other labors, but instead they relied on the donations of local church members and those with whom they had contact. Rather than proselytizing or recruiting members from similar competing denominations to join their churches, these Protestant ministers worked together to strengthen inter-church bonds and to convince the unconvinced of, as they called it, the need to "get religion." When closely investigated, these early Nebraska Protestant ministers defy common assumptions about churches and missionaries in the West. Robert J. Voss http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/22 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/22 Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:18:55 PDT Lake Andes sits at the center of the Yankton Sioux Reservation in south-central South Dakota and might be described as a prairie pothole, except it encompasses nearly 5,000 acres when full of water, stretching twelve miles long by a mile to a mile and a half wide in a quasi-crescent shape. Originally carved out by a receding glacier during the Wisconsin glaciations, for its entire history the lake has gone dry during low precipitation -- a cycle interrupted after the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) commissioned several artesian wells beginning in 1896. As the lake expanded, the U.S. Fish Commission stocked the lake with 600 largemouth bass. For the next thirty-seven years a recreation fishery thrived, crashing in the 1930s when drought and carp eliminated the "bass bonanza."Artesian wells and largemouth bass formed an unlikely association in the campaign to re-order Lake Andes, acting as the most effective agents in an arsenal of technologies employed by governments, individuals, and organizations laboring to extend the American national project. Scientists featured prominently in the effort, as geologists, mathematicians, ichthyologists, horticulturalists, and ornithologists appeared in turn, though frequently the realm of "pure science" arrived filtered through layers of interpretation. In particular, the federal government supported knowledge creation and employed that research in transformative initiatives.By the end of the 1930s, the lake was significantly altered. Coinciding with the massive public works projects of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, a carp eruption fomented a local groundswell for federal intervention, culminating in a National Wildlife Refuge and the legal and physical partitioning of the lake. At the same time, John Collier's Indian New Deal petulantly denied Yanktons a democratic government, thereby excluding them from critical management decisions that reverberate to the present day. This biography of Bde Ihanke-Lake Andes serves to remind that there are many ways to order the world. In the United States, science has served as a crucial adjunct to governmental power in the active campaign to wrest wildlife management authority from Native Americans, abrogating tribal sovereignty as the power shifted from tribes to states and ultimately to the federal government. David Nesheim http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/21 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/21 Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:43:44 PDT This study explores the relationship between the American Indian Movement (AIM), national newspaper and television media, and the Trail of Broken Treaties caravan in November 1972 and the way media framed, or interpreted, AIM's motivations and objectives. The intellectual and political currents present in the 1960s, including the ideas of Vine Deloria, Jr., and the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, influenced the development of AIM's ideas about militant tactics and the role media played in social movements. AIM entered the national stage with the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in late 1972 and used television broadcasts and print media to disseminate their ideas for federal policy reform. Media often missed the purpose of the Trail of Broken Treaties, instead focusing their narrative around a different set of political issues. Early reports of the Trail of Broken Treaties were sparse until the occupation led to a substantial increase in coverage, though what was considered "newsworthy" by the media differed from the issues activists hoped to raise. Final reports focused on the cost of the occupation, legal proceedings in the aftermath of the occupation, and high-level changes in the hierarchy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Department of Interior. Adviser: John R. Wunder The attached zipped file (bottom of page) contains the digital project that served as a component of the thesis. Jason A. Heppler http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/20 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/20 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:23:10 PDT Chapter I. Nebraska Trails Before the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cut-off Located 1860 Chapter II. Origins of Nebraska City and Fort Kearny Chapter III. Nebraska City Becomes a Government Freighting Depot Chapter IV. Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cut-off or Steam Wagon Road Chapter V. Along the Trail Chapter VI. Historical Significance of the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Trail The most outstanding contributions of the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny cut-off to the development of Nebraska would seem to lie in the fact that it penetrated into the very heart of the rich South Platte prairies and opened them up to settlement at a much earlier date than would otherwise have been possible. As traffic over the trail increased, ranches were set up and people gathered about these ranches to engage in merchandising, blacksmithing and other lines of business. In this way, small settlements were formed and as emigrants came along, they selected land near those ranches. The part which the Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Trail played in the development of the territory west of Nebraska lies primarily in the fact that it afforded the shortest route from the Missouri river to Fort Kearny in both time and distance. The road itself was much better than any of the other trails because it had practically no sand and it had no large streams that were not adequately bridged. Because of the shorter distance and the excellent road bed, it was possible to travel much faster in going to Denver and other western points than was possible on the other trails. This not only expedited passenger traffic but it also made it possible for the better freighting outfits to make extra trips and to haul larger loads, The extra goods brought into the western country in this way made it possible to sustain a greater population and hastened the permanent settlement of the West. Charles Boyd Mapes http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/19 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/19 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:42:39 PDT This study explores the relationship between federal land policy and women's property rights in the nineteenth-century American West, analyzing women's responses to expanded property rights under the 1850 Oregon Donation Act, the Homestead Act of 1862, and the 1887 General Allotment Act, and the ways in which the demands of empire building shaped legislators' decisions to grant such rights to women. These laws addressed women's property rights only in relation to their marital status, and solely because women figured prominently in the national project of westward expansion. Women utilized these property rights to both engage in the process of empire building, and to challenge the imperial order, primarily as it related to the re-construction of the American gender order. As women moved westward (or experienced the impact of such movement) in the nineteenth century they encountered and contested ideas about race, gender, and citizenship that were inextricably linked to federal land policies. White women in Oregon, African American and white women homesteaders on the Kansas prairies, and Nez Perce women forced onto a reservation in Idaho shared the experience of becoming property owners. For white women, this meant new rights, granted with the implied responsibility of modeling proper gender behaviors, from marriage to childrearing and domesticity. For indigenous women, this meant assimilation to a new gender order through the restructuring of conceptions of property ownership and rights, and compliance with dominant ideas about marriage and gender roles. Because they were the most invisible female population in the imperial project, African American women slipped through the knotty discussions about women and property, their race prohibiting them from consideration as appropriate models of civilized behavior and proper gender relations. Despite their differences, through their status as land owners, women shared the experience of being players in an imperial game that demanded them to negotiate a rocky terrain, littered with the racialized and gendered expectations which accompanied the efforts to establish a western American empire. Advisor: Margaret Jacobs Tonia M. Compton http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/18 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/18 Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:07:38 PDT Hawai'i holds a somewhat nebulous place in American History. While it easily fits in the dominant narrative surrounding the Spanish American War of 1898 and World War II, Hawai'i rarely factors into other major historical fields, often making a brief cameo appearance when it does. Because the state is geographically placed at the western extreme of America, one supposes that western historians would gladly accept the task of chronicling Hawaiian history; yet, even academics in this field hesitate to embrace the region. In fact, some scholars who study the American West completely dismiss the notion of including the Hawaiian Islands. General American history textbooks reflect academics' uncertainty towards including the islands in the greater American narrative as they rarely mention Hawaiian events. Comparing Hawai'i with the continental territories, Native American policy, American insular colonies, and U.S. imperialism, however, quickly dispels the notion that Hawai'i lies outside the American West. In fact, it holds a very important role in American history as the transitional zone between the older expansionist American imperialism and a newer form of American colonialism. Moreover, incorporating Hawaiian history into western regional studies forces scholars in the field to rethink existing paradigms. At the present, western historians view the West as a place lying roughly between the Mississippi River and the Pacific coast. Including the Hawaiian Islands, however, forces them to refine their rigid political definition of the West to allow for more fluid boundaries. This dissertation argues that including Hawai'i forces scholars to redefine the region as those incorporated territories throughout western North America and the Pacific Ocean which the United States conquered, subdued, annexed, and admitted into the Union. Moreover, it is a place in which American imperialism reshaped, and continues to shape, all facets of human life and the environment. Aaron Steven Wilson http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/17 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/17 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:49:24 PDT In an effort to increase the food supply, the U.S. Fish Commission began shipping carp hatchlings in 1877 and within five years the number of requests grew to seven thousand. By 1896 the stocking program was discontinued when any further introductions were deemed unnecessary. It did not take long for the fish to overspread the continent, moving from the ranks of coveted transplant to invasive menace by the 1920s. From the first application in 1934, an active campaign of carp poisoning was underway in lakes and stream across the country by the 1950s. In 1958, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service brought the poison campaign against carp to Lake Andes, a large lake in south-central South Dakota on the Yankton Sioux Reservation. Over the course of the twentieth century, the lake has been home to several bass fishing resorts, a state fish hatchery, and a federal wildlife refuge. The story of Lake Andes cannot be told without including carp. And a full retelling requires recognition of the ways that carp forced humans to consider and frequently reconsider their priorities. Private citizens, local civic organizations and government, state and federal bureaucrats, along with biologists and the scientific community, all responded to the presence of carp. The networks extending from their profusion in streams, rivers and lakes across America remain connected by the action of fish. Agency works as well as any other term to define that phenomenon. So, yes, carp have agency. David Nesheim http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/16 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/16 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:48:14 PDT Abstract: Lonely Sounds: Popular Recorded Music and American Society, 1949-1979 Lonely Sounds: Popular Recorded Music and American Society, 1949-1979 examines the relationship between the experience of listening to popular music and social disengagement. It finds that technological innovations, the growth of a youth culture, and market forces in the post-World War II era came together to transform the normal musical experience from a social event grounded in live performance into a consumable recorded commodity that satisfied individual desires. The musical turn inward began in the late 1940s. Prior to the postwar era, the popular music experience was communal, rooted in place, and it contained implicit social obligations between the performer and the audience and among members of the audience. Beginning in the late 1940s, technological, social, and cultural innovations, including new radio formats, automobile radios, and an expanding recording industry liberated popular music from some of the restraints of place and time. Listeners in the 1950s acquired expanded opportunities for enjoying music in ways that were more private, mobile, and intensely personal. Not only did the opportunities to listen alone expand enormously, but so also did the inclination. The postwar youth culture that grew up around the Top 40 radio format and 45-rpm singles stood at the vanguard of this revolutionary change in the musical experience. For many young listeners, rock and roll records represented a singular authentic experience. By the middle 1960s, these listeners believed that correctly listening to rock records not only revealed a unique self but also reintegrated alienated individuals into supportive communities. The isolated nature of the listening experience, however, poignantly frustrated such hopes. The dream of social renewal through rock records collapsed in the early 1970s. In its place came a more aggressive emphasis on self-sufficiency and personal control. In the subsequent decade devices such as the Sony Walkman successfully colonized public space, shielding listeners from other sounds while enclosing them in a private sonic environment of their choosing. This revolution in the musical experience, I contend, reflected and contributed to the pervasive sense of loneliness associated with the postwar era. Chris R. Rasmussen http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/15 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/15 Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:28:34 PST The Nebraska Territory was established in 1854. Consisting of lands that encompass modern-day Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and parts of Montana, the region was quite extensive. Originally, this land was part of the Louisiana Purchase, and some of the land had been reserved for Native American relocation following various treaties of the 1830s and 1840s. As pressures mounted to open the land for white settlement, both Nebraska and Kansas were established as territories in 1854. The objective of this research is to examine the foundations of community in Nebraska Territory during the years 1854-1870. Specifically, this dissertation examines the origins of community in Richardson, Burt, and Platte counties. An evaluation of the origins and demographic characteristics of the citizens is described. This includes analysis of a database of the citizens including examination of age, gender breakdown, and birthplace of early frontier dwellers. This dissertation analyzes settlement patterns in the three counties with reference to the new environment of the Great Plains, cultural background of the settlers, and economic activities. In addition, this study pursues the question of motivation for creating certain institutions in this Great Plains territory and state. A brief study of community politics and legal affairs as well as the impact of creating school and religious institutions is examined. Residence in the counties of Richardson, Burt, and Platte in Nebraska afforded their citizens the opportunity to construct the social institutions of their choosing while starting life anew. Farmers, businessmen, craftsmen, and political figures all contributed to the new communities while marginalizing the original Native American inhabitants. Ph.D. dissertation, under the Supervision of Professor Kenneth J. Winkle Nicholas Joseph Aieta