Review by George Sibley
Western history – January 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
The West: An Illustrated History for Children
by Dayton Duncan
Published in 1996 by Little, Brown & Co.
ISBN 0-316-19628-2
THIS “illustrated history of the West for children” is a book every adult in the West should read — for their own edification as well as their children’s.
Most people who read newspapers know that the history of the American West has been infiltrated, and in some instances overtly assaulted, by revisionist scholars who argue that the grand old narrative of civilization conquering savagery across the continent leaves out too many people. This has of course become all tangled up in the reactionary conservative movement that screams “P.C.! Politically Correct!” every time anyone suggests the expansion of American history beyond the traditional stories of beneficent Euro-American domination of the continent.
But even those who believe that history should be fair wonder if something irretrievable might be lost in confusion if we begin teaching a western history that gives everybody on all sides of the “frontier” an equal voice.
Dayton Duncan demonstrates in this book that nothing need be lost, and much is gained, when we look at the American West not as the advance of civilization into savagery, but as a place in which many people with many different and often conflicting cultures met and mixed in an often violent but also invigorating amalgam.
Duncan was a consultant on the 1996 television series, “The West,” directed by Stephen Ives and produced by Ken Burns, and on Burns’ recent production on Lewis and Clark. This book is adapted from “The West.” Duncan has distilled the essence of that long series without falling into too much over-simplification — a remarkable feat.
He personalizes the history of the West by weaving together the stories of individuals as well as relating the political and economic histories of the larger groups of which the individuals were representative. They are all here, most of them with individual representatives — the white covered wagon parties, the black Exodusters, the Mormons fleeing the United States, the forty-niners, the Indian tribes trying to find their place in the face of this great “unsettlement” pressure.
And Duncan tells their stories without judgment; even the most bleeding-heart, knee-jerk P.C. liberal will be as moved by the story of the Anglo couple John G. Love and Ethel Waxham in Wyoming as by the story of Sitting Bull and Wounded Knee — which, for the first time in my experience, tells of the Anglo fear and unfortunate misunderstandings that underlay the massacre as well as the awful nature of the deed.
The book is liberally illustrated by black and white historical photos, of places, events and the individuals whose stories he tells. The language is clear enough for young readers, but he never talks down to his audience.
There are some other wonderful histories of the American West that reflect the new scholarship and thinking that has revitalized the field of history — Richard White’s It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own is my own favorite, but the works of Patricia Nelson Limerick, Donald Worster, William Cronin and others are as worthy. These tend to be big books, however, that most readers will not want to take on.
Duncan’s book, on the other hand, can be read in a couple of sittings. It has the quality of “mythic compression” in that regard — a retelling that gets to essences without sacrificing richness and necessary detail. And everybody’s West is here.
— George Sibley
