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The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado

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This is a truly outstanding work. In a microcosmic study, West has written a new synthesis of Western American history.

Beginning with the the High Plains environment and the resources it provided, West begins with the story of the American Indian tribes who migrated to this area and how the Plains environment affected their society and lifestyle. Then, focusing on the Gold Rush years of 1858 and 1859, he discusses how the mineral resources of the territory attracted the hordes of white settlers to the plains, as well as the nature of the people who came here and the cultural expectations they carried with them.

Finally, he discusses how the Native American and white American cultures clashed with each other and the role the environment played in that conflict. West details the power struggle that took place on the Plains and the reasons for the eventual white triumph.

This book is an important work in the history of the Overland experience of the 19th century. Alongside works such as John Unruh's "The Plains Across" (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), it fills in some important pieces of the puzzle for one of the most crucial periods in the history of American nationbuilding.

Professor West's outstanding book finally brings some balance to the discussion of conflicts between Native Americans and white settlers in the 19th Century American West. Using the Colorado Gold Rush as a singularly transforming event, West has documented both camps' accomplishments and depredations in interesting and impeccable detail. His analysis of the detrimental environmental impacts of Indians and settlers alike on the High Plains' limited resources is brilliant. As a native Coloradoan, I believe that Contested Plains should be mandatory reading for all students of Colorado history. His settings, characters, conflicts and outcomes are more compelling than any fictional account of Western settlement. Contested Plains is an important reminder that Colorado's history was played out in its sparse plains and not in the mountains for which it is best known. Elliot West's book is a triumph and must reading for students of the history of the American West.

Elliott West is an intriguing author and this expansive history of the Plains Indians and the Colorado gold rush is fascinating. He begins by relating the story of the peopling of the central High Plains, how the Spanish-introduced horses thrived on the grasses found there and how the Indians, especially the Cheyenne, made the horses the central aspect of their way of life. He describes next the earliest contacts with Europeans, the early fur trappers and traders along the Santa Fe and other trails. Then he reaches what will be the main thrust of his book: the discovery of gold along Cherry and Dry Creeks near today's Denver by a group of Georgian prospectors in the summer of 1858. Word of their finds reached Kansas City by late August, the rest of the eastern United States by September, and California by October (via the Isthmus of Panama). The rush was on. He tells of the three main river routes open to the gold seekers: the Platte (northern), the Arkansas (southern), and the Smoky Hill (central), the riskiest route because of a shortage of water and deadly weather storms. He explains how the Front Range prospered quickly and towns grew. And he traces how all of this activity devastated the way of life for the Indians, resulting, if not exactly ending, most disgracefully at Sand Creek. The field covered by West's book has been mined often, but rarely with the flair and style he brings to his study. The book combines scholarship and anecdotal reports magnificently, and is a pleasure to read. Highly recommended.

The title, The Contested Plains, relays Elliot West's desire to tell the story of the 1858 Colorado Gold Rush not from the perspective of the destination, but from the tale of the journey. West is determined to understand the environmental history of the plains as well as the perspective of the Indians who long inhabited them. He not only attempts to understand the land itself, but also how the indigenous peoples, and ultimately the gold seekers, used it. Clearly defined within the story are the concepts of imagination, impact, and power and the story itself is in fact divided into these three subsections: Vision, Gold Rush, and Power. West relates the tale through multiple scopes as he attempts anthropological, geological, economic, cultural, topographical, and biological interpretations of the 19th century transformation of the western Plains environment.
West begins by taking the reader back to the land before time in what he calls the "Old World." His clever play on the general Euro centric application of the world is all the more poignant when it is understood that this truly is the Indians' "Old World," and that a new and generally inhospitable future awaits them. After this short introduction, introduced is Spanish explorer Coronado and offers the foreshadowing of the encounter, exchange, and exclusion of the next four centuries.
The staples of the Western encounter remain the same. Disease, trade, firearms, and the horse are the four major players in the transformation of Indian lives. This is where West's biological angle emerges. He constructs the interdependence of life between the Indians and the Plains and the fundamental impact that the introduction of the horse levied upon their lifestyle. While horse and firearm prove beneficial and disease fatal, trade has been cast in a more complex light. The same trading systems that permitted the general rise of the Plains Indian became its downfall as settlers pushed westward in search of increased capital through a marginal gold rush or a now expanded trade system.
The encroachment of settlers onto the Plains found fundamentally different uses for the land. While the Cheyenne, or Tsistsistas, had managed a sustainable lifestyle consisting of hunting, grazing, movement, and trade, the relatively static farming productions of the white settler not only consumed valuable land space needed for the Indians, it levied substantial tolls upon the environment itself, particularly in times of drought. Accompanied by a population explosion wholly untenable with the nature of the land, it wasn't long before bloody conflicts between the two groups would arise, with the ultimate victor being the white settler.
West has written a comprehensive narrative consisting of several different vantage points, the most emotive being the ultimate transformation and decline of the life of the Plains Indian tribes. Voice has also been given to the land in this account. West is careful to make no judgments on the Indians or the gold seekers and settlers. He is pragmatic when he exclaims that "two cultures acted out compelling visions in a land that could support only one."

This is one of the finest books ever written about the settlement of the eastern Colorado/western Kansas plains country and is destined to become a classic. If one is just starting to become interested in the history of this part of the country then this book should be read before any others. West's writing style is reminiscent of James A. Michener as he takes the reader back to the earliest settlement of North America by the indigenous people of the plains through their ultimate fate as victims of the Manifest Destiny policies of the 19th Century. West uses the plains country itself as a central "character" and discusses the historical, ecological, and economical interaction between this priceless resource and the various groups of people who occupied it. The primary criticism is the writer's tendency to become too verbose and philosophical. However, this should not deter the potential reader from the pleasure of reading a truly well researched and well written book.

This is a remarkably different and quite excellent treatment of Colorado history. The central thesis is that the land, in terms of what it offered, attracted materially different groups and cultures over time and that the inevitable culture clash which occurs between contesting groups was a relatively constant occurrence ever since man first wandered down from the North. More importantly, Professor West notes that the transition periods were not unique to the then contending players but tended to repeat their patterns throughout time in a very regular way, first Indian against Indian, then Spanish against Indian and finally American against Indian.

I realize the premise might sound strange to some, that the topography and what it contained dictated human events, but Professor West contends that the land itself drove the history which has occurred on Colorado's Front Range. While not an approach for everyone's reading tastes, i.e., we do not need the stage described to enjoy the play, I personally enjoyed this book. It is a thoughtful, different approach and he weaves an interesting tale.

His analysis left me with a better understanding of the Colorado gold rush, the players and how what happened unfolded. I found the book quite brilliant. No white hats, no black hats, just lots of grey. But be forewarned, while West is an excellent author and the history described is quite eloquent, his approach could leave some readers disappointed. It is a bit academic but overall, very nicely done.

If you are looking for an interesting and informative work on the Colorado Gold Rush, you have found a good one.

I greatly enjoyed this history of western Kansas, eastern Colorado, southern Nebraska and adjacent areas. The author does a fine job of integrating technological, economic, and environmental effects upon the American Indians that inhabited those areas.

The effect of the Colorado Gold Rush upon those Indians is a principal focus of the book. The Euro-American tribe meets the Great Plains Indian tribes. The effect, as we all know very well, was not pretty. The invasion of North America was truly a catastrophe for the American Indians as is well documented in countless other books.

What makes this book extremely interesting to me--in addition to being set in a part of the country, central/western Kansas, that I was born and raised in--is how it took a more sophisticated and less sentimental look at white and Indian relationships.

Until the plains Indians got their hands on the horses of the Europeans, they lived a pretty ecologically limited life. They could not fully take advantage of the wealth of the grassland prairies--and the buffalo that inhabited it. They needed the horse to more ably hunt the buffalo. Prior to that, they were riparian gardeners and hunters afoot on the surrounding prairie. Once they had the horse, they could greatly expand their populations and territories. Caloric consumption surely sky rocketed. The Plains Indian horse based buffalo hunting culture was an historical exception. It only lasted for around 100 years before it was brought to a sudden end by the US Army, the white ranchers and farmers, and the general Euro-American settling of the plains.

The horse was also a mixed blessing. Like the white man's firearms.... Both increased the level of violence and warfare on the plains. The horse gave tribes better mobility and something of great value to steal from other competing tribes. The warfare stakes became higher in terms of horses, land, and access to buffalo. The tribes that engaged in this way of life had ecological limits to their lifestyle. They had to maintain large horse herds to support their hunting lifestyle. That was not a problem during the good weather. But in the winter time, the only protection for the tribes and their horses on the plains were the wooded creeks and rivers. The large horse herds and their need for feed in the wintertime resulted in the degradation of the riparian woods. This was especially a difficult problem for the more northerly tribes with their intense winters. Eventually, even without the Euro-American invasion, the plains tribes would have faced environmental crises and limits to their growth and expansion. It was a zero sum game in terms of resources--or rather more accurately, a negative sum game in the long run with the continuing degradation of the wooded riparian areas on the plains. Without the whites invading, Indian plains warfare amongst the tribes would probably have gotten more bloody and intense resulting in the successful tribes monopolizing the resources of the plains.

Then again, without the horse,the introduction of firearms and consumer goods, and pressures from Eastern Indians forced west by the Euro-American invasion, things probably would have remained fairly static for the plains tribes. However, since their resources would be a lot fewer without access to the horse, they would be far fewer in number and probably substantially poorer in a material sense.

The author deals at some length about the Indians dependency on European goods. It is somewhat comforting to know that consumerism is a universal human condition, not just a 20th and 21rst century Western mindset. Humans desire "things" or "goods". Sometimes those goods nurture and promote human life--sometimes they simply degrade people and cultures. I was rather charmed by the fierce Kiowa chief's, Satanta, love of his Euro-American manufactured French horn and small table used for his household. Satanta was a fierce hater of the whites--but he loved those goods. Not an uncommon predicament for the American Indian.

In the long run, it seems that all cultures use military force to take and hold territory. The tribes bloodily fought each other over the resources of the plains prior to the coming of the whites. And they certainly bloodily fought their great enemy, the whites, when they made their entrance on the plains. Not much room for pacifists in the story of human nations and countries--admirable as the pacifists' spirituality, religion, and philosophy may be. Unfortunately, Americans may live to see the day when they, too, will be fighting to defend their resources from hungrier--and possibly stronger--other tribes and nations. At one time the conqueror, the next moment the defeated. The endless--or at least seemingly so--cycle of history.

This is a very unique book about settlers and the plains Indians because the author gives a detailed introductory history on each as it coincides with the discovery of gold, the mass migration of miners and settlers that went west and the effects it had on the nomadic Indian's way of life. Lots of minute detail that is not exactly for a quick read but the author makes great points that the Indians existed in America thousands of years before Moses and that their life as nomads accelerated when Cortez introduced the horse to the plains Indians. The author also demonstrates that the various tribes of Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapahoe, Comanche, Apache and others were already straining the resources of the plains, which are dramatically effected by the mass migration of whites. Even the buffalo moved further east from the front range of the Rockies where tribal rivalries gave the over hunted beasts a sanctuary in no mans land. In addition, the development of Denver through the discovery of gold is actually quite interesting as the mountain men and those married to Indian women had initial influence that promptly disappears as Denver flourishes once a higher class society emerges. The initial boosters are eventually disregarded as well as the tribal influences through family relations. Finally, the author puts it altogether noting that whites took the various oases on the plains where water, grass and trees were plentiful, removing the primary sources of comfortable survival for the Indians. What happens to the Indians has some familiarity to what is happening in rural America where developers (ranchers, the army, farmers and miners in this case) flatten large tracts of land changing not only the landscape but also the community itself but of course with more dire effects to the Indian way of life. By taking the natives' areas of shelter and food, they are eventually hard pressed to survive culminating in occasional armed conflict particularly by the dog soldiers. There was a misunderstanding or lack of appreciation by settlers that just because Indians did not occupy water and treed sites at the present, it did not mean it was not used. The Indians used many of these more productive areas as seasonal shelters for their nomadic use, which begin to be occupied exclusively by whites. In the end, resistance by some dog soldiers fuels the totally avoidable massacre at Sand Creek where peaceful Cheyenne were instructed to camp. The massacre was even a greater tragedy since responsible individuals knew and informed Chivington that village camp was peaceful with several notable whites staying with their relatives by means of marriage. As the author points out, the massacre may also have been a violent repudiation of the intermingling of the races. Sometimes there is too much detail (in the introduction that author states that his friends complain that he cannot write about a stop sign unless he gives an in-depth history of the intersection) but the final 60 pages converge into understanding how the Indians were pushed out of their prime hunting areas and areas of respite resulting in short termed and sporadic welfare. As the author points out, the attraction of gold in Denver causes the vacuum of the plains to be filled changing the life of the Indians in virtually a short period.

The Contested Plains, by one of the most imaginative Western historians writing today, is a masterpiece in the field. It puts peoples-white and Indian-together in a complicated field of action--the Plains and the Rockies in the 19th century. West shows us a world of surprising and fascinating complexity, a place of high drama undergoing sweeping transformations. West is a master storyteller. Behind the compelling and vivid narrative there are new approaches in the field of Western history, including its way of re-looking at the frontier as a zone of cultural contestation and exchange in which it is as important to take stock of the land and animals as of the peoples, their economies, and their ideas. If you are at all interested in Western history, read this book!

My new favorite state is Colorado and I wanted to know more.

The author is an extremely prolific writer, unfortunately watering down an extremely interesting subject. He basically brags somewhere in the Forward or Introduction that when he and friends come to an intersection, he'll go into the complete history of that location. I guess he's more in love with his style than we are. You'll find yourself skimming very soon into the book, wishing it wasn't written kind of in a novel style with too much information. It's a thick book. If the unnecessary filler stuff wasn't in it, it would read better. Too bad, Colorado is not boring by any stretch, but this book is.