The Western History Association

Reflections of a Historian of Native American History Author(s): W. David Baird Reviewed work(s): Source: The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 441-444 Published by: Western Historical Quarterly, Utah State University on behalf of The Western History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/971420 . Accessed: 06/03/2013 12:34
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Cutter, Gressley, Fite, Baird, and Riley Why has no scholarundertakenthis kind of historicalproject?The firstansweris that it would be a huge multi-yeartask to do the necessaryreadingand research,and then write, synthesize,and interpretsuch a vast quantity of information.Aspects of economic, political, social, environmental, and the role of women and other areasof history would need to be considered to do the quality of work the subject deserves. The time and effort involved in such a project would probablynot provide a quick professionalreturn. Moreover,neither economic historynor agricultural history is popularamong the currentgenerationof historians.Except possiblyfor the Journal of Southern History,a look at any of the majorjournalsdealing with Americanhistoryconfirmsthis observation. The Western Historical (WHQ) has publishedrelativelyfew articleson Quarterly becausefew good studieshave been submitaspectsof westernagriculture, presumably ted. A betterconfirmationof the lack of popularityof agricultural historycan be found in the list of dissertations.For example, in 1994 the WHQ listed 2 dissertationson agricultureand ranching, 12 on Native Americans, 8 on ethnicity and race, 10 on environmentaltopics, and 2 on mining. In 1997, only 3 dissertationsdealt specifically with agriculture and ranching, 17 with ethnicity and race, and 36 with Native Americans. The trendysubjectshave taken over much of the profession,leaving agriculture and economic history in the professionaldustbin. This is no place to arguewhat asthe past, but few would deny pects of historyare the most importantin understanding that economic development is a worthy, but neglected, aspect of the region'spast, had a majorrole. present,and future.In this, agriculture One and one-half centuries after the Californiagold rush,which did so much to initiate the settlement and subsequentgrowth of the West, it is time for some energetic and imaginative scholar to undertakea comprehensive history of the region's agriculture.The task is challenging, but the rewardfor filling this huge historical gap would be great,not in money, but in helping this generationto better understand the West.

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REFLECTIONS OF A HISTORIAN OF NATIVE AMERICANHISTORY W. DAVID BAIRD

I READ RODMAN PAUL'S Gold(Cambridge, California as a MA, 1947) graduatestudent at the University of Oklahoma. Even then it was considereda classic. In 1978, I met Professor Paul at the Hot Springs,Arkansasmeeting of the Western History Association and was as awed by his disdain of "southern as by his encyclopedicknowledgeof gold mining cooking and southernhousekeeping"
A native of Edmond,Oklahoma,W. David Bairdreceived his Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma. He is currentlythe HowardA. White Professor of History at Pepperdineand dean of Seaver College, Pepperdine's school. WHA President, 1989. undergraduate

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history.BecauseI had read and talked with the master,subsequentstudiesof the gold rushera made little impressionon me. My mind-set changed, however,with the publication of Malcolm Rohrbough'sDays of Gold (Berkeley, 1997). While Paul'swork had established the basic narrative,Rohrbough'saccount asked new questions, employed new categories of analysis, and used source material imaginatively.It was a detailed, insightful,sensitive, and passionatestory of the forty-ninersand remarkably their world. It also illustratedthat historians of western American mining practice their craftmuch differentlythan did their colleaguesone-half centuryearlier. The same, of course,can be said of almost every field of historical inquiry.Yet, as in overland and western mining history,the change in some areasis more profound and dramatic.Consider what has happened in Native American history.Thirty-five yearsago when I began graduatestudies,Indianhistoryas a field of studydid not exist, at Oklahomaor elsewhere.I took courseworkand wrotecomprehensiveexaminations in westernAmerican history,as well as in American and earlymoder Europeanhistory.Researchseminarswith Donald Owings, Arrell M. Gibson, Donald Berthrong, and EugeneHollon convinced me that history was all about primarysources,original research, and cogent presentation of the facts. My professorseven pointed to Rod Paul's work as a model. Their credo of "no documents, no history" caused me to be suspiciousof oral sourcesand to devalue the social sciences, especially anthropology, as a method of analysis.In time, I defined myselfas a westernAmericanhistorian, even a Turnerian,drawn to the field by its preferencefor narrative,exceptionalism, and nationalism. Although my dissertation was a biographyof Choctaw chief Peter Pitchlynn, it was no differentfrom dissertationsof other students in western American history. I chose Pitchlynn as a topic becausehe had left enough personalpapersto fill two fourdrawer file cabinetsand becausehis frequentinteractionswith the federalgovernment had left a trail of documents subsequentlydeposited in the National Archives. I apto admit, as if he were a typical frontierelite proached Pitchlynn, I am embarrassed and as if the Choctaws were a typical frontier community. As a tool of analysis, I borrowed"acculturation" fromRalph Linton, but I do not rememberconsulting the work of any other anthropologists.There was no need to. I had documents in abundance, and my storycentered in "fact"ratherthan theory. In due time, the University of Oklahoma Press published my biography of Pitchlynn. The editor, Ed Shaw, requiredrevisions, of course. Among them was the elimination of any referenceto acculturation.One manuscriptreaderhad objected to my use of the term, not becauseI had appliedit superficially(which would have been valid), but because the concept was of little interest to moder scholars.As an assistant professorat the University of Arkansas,Fayetteville, who needed a published book, I did not argue the point. Actually, I internalized it. Over the next decade I cranked out one long and three brief tribal histories without a single reference to anthropologicaltheory or practice. The style was strictly narrative;the sourceswere primarily governmentdocuments;the resultswere unembellishedaccounts of IndianWhite relationswithin the framework of westernAmerican history.

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Cutter,Gressley,Fite, Baird,and Riley

Lest I appearto have been hopelesslydense, my scholarlyeffortsin the 1970s were not unlike those of otherhistoriansworkingin the samefield. PaulPrucha,TomHagan, and Angie Debo, three of my professionalrole models, producednationally acclaimed studies of Indian-White interaction. In 1972, the National Archives even hosted a conference on the subject in Washington,DC, where I servedas a commentator,met D'Arcy McNickle, and got my first glimpse of Stan Steiner's "New Indian."Other Injourneymanhistorianslike me wrote tribalhistories too, usuallyfor the American dianCivilization Seriespublishedby the University of Oklahoma Press.And like me, few had training in anthropology;fewer still thought of themselves as anything but a student of the American frontier. My view of the discipline, and that of my peers,changed as we practicedour craft. In the early 1970s, like colleagues in other universities,I organizeda surveycourseon the history of the American Indian. The first set of notes for the class, which came directly from my West I and West II lectures, proved wholly inadequate.To provide context and coherence, I looked beyond frontierhistory to anthropology,sociology, and psychology.The work of Harold Driver and Charles Hudson were revelations to me. A varietyof "New"histories,especiallythe New Social History,offeredfreshcatof interpretation.The class was very successful, egoriesof analysisand new paradigms and by the third time I had taught it, I consciously thought of myself as an Indian rather than a frontier historian. The mini-transformation occurring in Fayetteville was more dramaticand more rapid at the national level. In Chicago, the Newberry had organized its D'ArcyMcNickle CenterforAmericanIndianHistory, funded Library in part by the National Endowmentfor the Humanities. Under the able leadership of FredHoxie, it sponsoredseminarsand conferencesthat encouragedan interdisciplinary approach to Native American studies. Younger scholars from a variety of disciplinesspent their summersin residence at the Newberry,leaving with new questions, methodologies, and modes of analysis.They practicedwhat Robert Berkhofer had defined as the "New Indian History"and often thought of themselves as ethnohistorians.Above all, they produceda body of scholarshipnotable for its freshness, strongtheses, new questions,and gracefulstyle of writing.Among the betterpractitioners, although not necessarily graduatesof the Newberry School of Indian history itself, were JamesAxtell, FrancisJennings, RichardWhite, William Cronon, David MichaelGreen, andJamesMerrell.Merrell's TheIndians' Edmunds, New World (Chapel Hill, 1989) representsNew Indian Historyat its nuanced best. My schedule never permittedme to spend a summerat the Center for American Indian History,especially after 1978, when I became chair of the historydepartment at OklahomaState University.I discoveredthe new methodologyby readingscholars who practicedit (RichardWhite, for example), marvelingthat they saw things I had not seen in the very same sourcesI had used. I learnedtoo by participatingin professional conferenceswhere the New Indian Historywas featured.Of these, most influential were an NEH-sponsored symposium in 1982 at Utah State University on "Churchmenand the Western Indians"and a seminar at UCLA'sAmerican Indian

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Studies Center in 1986 (also fundedby the NEH but organizedby the McNickle CenAnd ter) on "The Impactof IndianHistoryon the Teachingof United States History." over the years,I was educatedby historiansparticipatingin the annualmeetingsof the Western History Association and the Organizationof American Historians.In addition to those alreadymentioned were PatriciaLimerick,William McLoughlin,Alvin Josephy,and J. Leitch Wright. In 1988, when I moved to California and PepperdineUniversity, I went as a historianof Native Americansratherthan of frontierAmerica.Fromthat orientation, I coauthoreda history of Oklahoma.' I wrote the half of the book that related to the experiencesof the Wichita, Osage, and Five Tribespeople. My contributionwashardly a tourde force of interdisciplinarymethodology,but it did representa conscious attempt to look at Oklahoma'searly history from "the Indian point of view," to take Indian oral sourcesseriously,to accept Indian traditionsas legitimate, and to cast Indian people as actorsratherthan reactorson the historicalstage. In 1989, I tried to do the same thing in my presidential addressto the Western History Association, although with less success.2On that occasion, I learned that the New Indian History, like the old, had blind spots, specificallya veneer of political correctness. My own odyssey as a student and practitionerconfirms that Indian history has changed profoundlyas a field of inquiry.Earlyon, it had no identity beyond western American historyand was framedwithin a context of Indian-Whiterelations.Today, it has its own methodology, questions, and vocabulary,as well as its own graduate academic appointments,study centers, and publishingoutlets. Institutionprograms, Several Indian studies cenalization,however,gives no guaranteesof field durability. ters have curtailedtheir activities; new teaching opportunitieshave diminished;the numberof sessionsat professionalmeetings (excluding the WHA) devoted to Native American historyhas declined. And some olderpractitioners,amongwhom I number myself,have concluded that they lack the credentialsto do the field justice and have turnedtheir attention to other projectsand more traditionalinterpretativeparadigms. In my case, this means a returnto my roots:Native Americanswithin the context of westernAmericanhistory,althoughwithout Turner. In all, the futureof Native American studies as a distinct historicalfield seems problematic. Whether the field survives or Native American history is written by ethno- or western-American historiansis hardlyimportant.Developmentsover the past35 years assure that whatever is written will address more intelligent questions, use more relevant sources, and offer more richly textured narratives than in the past. Like gold rush studies, Indian history will be more sophisticatedand meaningful.A comTecumseh and the (Norman, 1972) with David Edmund's parisonof my PeterPitchlynn Comanche Questfor Indian (Boston, 1984) and Tom Hagan'sQuanahParker, Leadership Chief(Norman, 1993) will illuminatethe differencebetween what has been and what will be.
W. David Bairdand Danney Goble, The Storyof Oklahoma, (Norman, 1994). W. David Baird,"Are the Five Tribesof Oklahoma 'Real'Indians?" Western Historical 21 (February 1990): 5-18. Quarterly
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