South Pass: Gateway to a Continent
by Will Bagley (University of Oklahoma)
Some 500,000 Americans crossed South Pass between 1840 and 1870 on their way to Oregon, California and Utah. South Pass was “the gateway to a continent,” writes Utah historian Will Bagley. Without it, he contends, pioneers could not have crossed the continent in a single season and westward expansion might have been delayed for generations. The pass at the Continental Divide in southwestern Wyoming is more of a saddle than a pass. In fact, the Shoshones supposedly called it “the place where God ran out of mountains.” The pass is some 30 or 40 miles wide, which means there was no single road through it but various routes and cutoffs. And its summit is not obvious.
Indians and trappers used South Pass, but the majority of its travelers were pioneers. Missionaries Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding were not the first white women to cross it, as is generally believed, but their journey to Oregon through the pass convinced Americans that women could indeed make the transcontinental journey.
Mormon immigrants took advantage of the pass. So did Pony Express riders. But it was gold seekers eager to reach California who crowded the route. Not until late in the area’s history did prospectors actually find gold in South Pass, although the gold frenzy there was short-lived. The route’s usefulness all but ended in 1869 with the completion of the transcontinental railroad.
While South Pass is critical in the saga of the West, not much had been written about it until Bagley, one of the West’s finest historians, undertook this history. Without South Pass, he writes, the development of the West would have been a different story.
American Carnage: Wounded Knee, 1890
by Jerome A. Greene (University of Oklahoma)
Like Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre, Wounded Knee is a blot on America’s history. U.S. troops slaughtered some 200 Indians at Wounded Knee, many of them women and children, in a Christmastime massacre in 1890. It was the final nail in the coffin for American Indians.
Much has been written about Wounded Knee, which took place on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and the name became a battle cry for young Indians during the Red Power movement in the 1970s. But nothing has been as comprehensive as Jerome A. Greene’s” American Carnage.” It is a scholarly, highly detailed account that includes events leading up to the massacre, the battle itself, and the aftermath in which survivors tried to get compensation from the government. Guess how that turned out.
The litany of broken treaties and government corruption is well known, and the emphasis gets a bit tedious. But Greene’s retelling of the massacre is spellbinding. The author uses many first-person accounts telling of the horror of Indian deaths.
One soldier wrote, “I came across a dead squaw and a little papoose who was sucking on a piece of hardtack. I picked up the little papoose and carried it in my arms. A little way farther on I found another dead squaw and another papoose I picked it up, too … I met a big, husky sergeant who said, “Why didn’t you smash them up against a tree and kill them? Some day they’ll be fighting us.”
One little girl, called Lost Bird, was rescued and raised by a general who may have sexually abused her. She didn’t fit into either the Indian or white world. She contracted syphilis and died at 29.
Greene includes new documentation that rejects “truths” such as the idea that Wounded Knee was revenge for the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
The University of Denver: A History
by Steve Fisher (History Press)
This year, DU celebrates its 150th year, and “The University of Denver: A History” celebrates the ups and downs of the venerable institution.
Founded by Territorial Gov. John Evans, who also started Northwestern University, DU has had a bumpy financial history. More than once the school was shut down for lack of funds, and at one time DU’s Old Main was about to be turned into a glue factory. One of its saviors was Chancellor Buchtel, for whom Buchtel Boulevard is named. He was so adept at fundraising that when a boy swallowed a quarter, according to local lore, a wag advised, “Go get Chancellor Buchtel! If he can’t get the quarter out of him, nobody can!”
The original campus was near downtown, but the administration feared the distraction of saloons and brothels on young students. So DU was moved to the University Park campus.
While the university was founded as a Methodist institution, it did not always practice Christian principles. An early football coach balked at playing against a team with a black player.
Fisher hits the highlights of the school’s history and its buildings and includes information on the surrounding land development. There’s even a chapter on the local hangout, the Stadium Inn. And he details what may have been the school’s most controversial decision — Chancellor Chester Alter’s announcement that DU was ending football, in 1961. In 2004, shortly before Alter’s death, author Steve Fisher asked him if he regretted it. Alter’s answer: “DU’s still there, isn’t it?”
