Three Frontiers: Family, Land, and Society in the American West, 1850-1900

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Cambridge University Press, Apr 28, 1997 - History - 313 pages
This book explores the values and aspirations of settlers in the Far West. It compares rural people who settled in the Willamette Valley in the 1840s, the Utah Valley in the 1850s, and the Boise Valley in the 1860s. The Oregon and Utah settlers tried with differing degrees of success to resist the modernizing trends represented by Idaho, but ultimately adopted the individualistic, commercial, and acquisitive values that prevailed in the New West. How did Americans move away from a culture centering on family and kin and from attitudes that valued and protected the land, not for its commercial worth, but as the base of support for future generations? What led to our present tendency to pursue individual pleasure and material well-being at the expense of communal and broader societal well-being? These are questions central to this comparative study of three peoples who pioneered the American frontiers.
 

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Contents

A long tedious journey
15
His own customs are the best
39
These savage desert regions
81
The heirs of my body
107
The soil to our posterity
146
The place where we lived
185
Our paths diverged
244
Coda
277
Notes on sources
284
Appendix
293
Index
299
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