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L. G. Moses | There's Too a There There: Prize Reflections 2003 Western History Association Published Prizewinners | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.3 | The History Cooperative
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Autumn, 2004
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There's Too a There There

Prize Reflections 2003 Western History Association Published Prizewinners

L. G. MOSES


      FOR THE LAST FEW YEARS IN THIS SPACE, authors have been of two minds. In their search for those mystic strands of comparison, they either congratulate the association for shedding its chrysalis of regionalism for a few seasons of mature flight across a larger historical landscape, or they return to "days of yesteryear" and concede the persistence of place. I admit to prejudice about place. Thank goodness others share the bias. President Brian Dippie, who announced the awards at the last annual banquet, reminded us in his welcome to Fort Worth that, by any geographical definition, he grew up in the greater North American West. Like so many others in our association, however, he has had some difficulty in locating the authentic region. He thought he had to leave Edmonton. Like young Dorothy, he had to look beyond the dooryard to find it. Legends often suggest that it is a place other than home. I've entertained that same suspicion for much of my life. I grew up in San Francisco. The American West emphatically ended leeward of The Great Highway at Ocean Beach. Place, obviously, had to yield on occasion to process. Realizing that, however, never freed me of a sardonic predisposition. I just knew that such a celebrated world had to be east of Oakland. 1
      The theme at the Fort Worth meeting had been the boundless West. Acts of the imagination, Dippie informed the faithful, created boundlessness. Now, as then, the American West could exist outside of time and place (and one suspects process). It continues to exert an appeal that is truly global.1 2
      Throughout more than a century of telling stories about the region, art, letters, and landscape changed. Yet, as a compelling direction on a worldwide compass, the American West could overpower magnetic north. 3
      Looking Both Ways, recipient of the Joan Paterson Kerr Award for the best illustrated book on the American West, reminds us of a broader and grander definition of the region. A collaborative work of Alutiiq elders, scholars, and storytellers, as well as non-Native anthropologists and historians, its text and art dazzles the mind and eye with evocative images of the people of Alaska's southcentral coast. The book's title is drawn from an observation made by Sven Haakanson, Sr., an elder from Kodiak Island: "You've got to look back and find out the past, and then you look forward."2 Seen from many perspectives, Alutiiq identity emerges in the pages as a luxurious pastiche of people, location, and experience. The book endorses many of the ideas of twenty-first century indigenous history about adaptive and resilient peoples. 4
      Arizona figures prominently in two prize-winning essays. Douglas Firth Anderson, master of the Arrington-Prucha Prize for the best essay on western American religious history, examines the southwestern biography of John P. Clum. Throughout his various incarnations as constable, postmaster, mayor, Indian agent, newspaper editor, and entrepreneur, Clum vouchsafed a commitment to Protestantism, progress, and prosperity working through the three great civilizers of pulpit, press, and stage. Harmonizing the three, Clum suggested, could secure the morals of any community. We learn by refined argument that, as an exemplar, Clum's life suggests a sacred and secular accommodation that undoubtedly drove more persons than just himself. This idea, Anderson demonstrates, has yet to be critically examined in a sustained way in western historiography. Clum's civilizers remind readers of the permeable boundaries between religion and other aspects of culture. Both then and now, "many of the liveliest sectors of western society have been promoted by their partisans, with or without formal religious commitments, with sensibilities that Clum, for one, would recognize."3 Too young to serve the noble cause of Union, he (as others of his generation) later juxtaposed masculine theatrics with reformist moralism. Spending time in the American West, he saw his efforts as serving the interests of white Protestant civilization. . . .
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