Empires, nations, and families : a new history of the North American west, 1800-1860

Empires, nations, and families : a new history of the North American west, 1800-1860 / Anne F. Hyde.

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the size of the new United States, promising not only land but prosperity for its citizens. But the West was not the virgin wilderness of common myth. America was a newcomer in a place already complicated by vying empires-Native and European. The author traces...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hyde, Anne Farrar, 1960-
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: New York : Ecco Press, 2012.
Edition:First ECCO paperback edition.
Subjects:
Families > West (U.S.) > History > 19th century.
Fur trade > Social aspects > West (U.S.) > History > 19th century.
Fur traders > Family relationships > West (U.S.) > History > 19th century.
Frontier and pioneer life > West (U.S.)
Indians of North America > West (U.S.) > Social conditions > History > 19th century.
Indians of North America > Commerce > West (U.S.) > History > 19th century.
Mexican War, 1846-1848 > Social aspects > West (U.S.)
West (U.S.) > Social conditions > 19th century.
West (U.S.) > Commerce > History > 19th century.
History.
Table of Contents:
  • Acknowledgments: Adventures in the land of the dead
  • Introduction: The geography of Empire in 1804. St. Louis ; Michilimackinac ; Santa Fe ; The Pacific Coast ; Family stories ; "Died single" ; Why fur and why families? ; Sources and definitions ; Maps and signposts
  • Part 1. Replacing a state : the continental web of family trade. Families and fur : the personal world of the early American West. The Chouteau family and the Missouri River world ; "Middle ground" or "Native ground" ; "Tough love" and family loyalty ; On the trail of wealth and opportunity ; The Sublette brothers and their family business ; Chasing fortune and family ; Americans in Mexico, Californios in America ; Dangerous places
  • Fort Vancouver's families : the custom of the country. Cogs in the fur trade ; The local and global communities of the Columbia ; The Métis world of John McLoughlin ; The tentacles of international trade ; The McLoughlins and the Company ; Life and work on the Columbia ; Global ambitions ; The fine mesh of the family network ; Immigrants, nations, and the loss of a family empire ; Murder at Fort Stikine and suicide in California
  • Three Western places : regional communities and Vecinidad. William Bent's border world ; Bent's Fort and its neighborhood ; Omens and weddings ; Norteños and Yanquis in Alta California ; Captain Sutter's New Helvetia ; Dinner and diplomacy in northern California ; Portents of change ; Stephen Austin's border world ; Planting colonies in Texas ; Austin's fractious neighborhood
  • Part 2. Americans all : the mixed world of Indian Country. The early West : the many faces of Indian Country. Cherokee, Shawnee, and Osage ; The view from Fort Osage ; The view from St. Louis ; Change, loss, and warfare on the Missouri ; The Arikara War ; Métis and half-breed in an Anglo west
  • Empires in transition : Indian Country at midcentury, 1825-1860. Counting Indians ; Expanding power ; The Santa Fe Trail ; Native nations and Texas Revolution ; Retrenchment and resistance ; The Osages and accommodation on the Arkansas ; Good Fathers and the fur trade ; Captivity tales and epidemic disease
  • Part 3. From nations to nation : imposing a state 1840-1865. Unintended consequences : families, nations, and the Mexican War. What if Guadalupe Boggs married Teresina Carson? ; Questions of citizenship and identity ; Joseph Smith and the origins of Mormonism ; Mexican revolutions ; Continental rumor factories ; The Bent family and the vagaries of war ; Bent's choice ; Brigham Young and the choices of war ; Hard choices in California ; The McLoughlins' choice
  • Border wars : disorder and disaster in the 1850s. The evolving fur trade world ; Postwar family and business on the Arkansas ; Indian wars in the Pacific northwest ; Oregon's bloody legacy ; The failure of warfare and Washington's Native Nations ; Nation building in the southwest ; Raising families and fighting wars
  • The state and its handmaidens : imposing order. Civil threats and the Mormons ; The personal politics of polygamy and theocracy ; The almost war and the massacre in Utah ; Conquest and chaos in California ; A nation of squatters ; While Kansas bled and native people fled ; The pesky details of popular sovereignty ; A national horror show ; The Minnesota uprising of 1862 ; Sand Creek and the Bent family nightmare
  • Epilogue: How it all turned out. Sonoma ; Los Angeles ; Taos ; The Arkansas River ; Oregon ; St. Louis ; Kawsmouth.

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