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The Old Roots of the New West: Howard Lamar and the Intellectual Origins of Dakota Territory1
JON LAUCK
Yale historian Howard Roberts Lamar has been a major force in the field of western history. This essay explores Lamar's turn toward the study of western history, explains the origins of his first book, Dakota Territory, and argues that Lamar's leadership can serve as a model to all western historians.
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HOWARD ROBERTS LAMAR HAS ENJOYED one of the most distinguished careers in the history of the American academy. Lamar taught history at Yale University for forty-five years and also served stints as dean of Yale College and president of Yale. His most permanent contribution to the discipline of American history has been helping to reinvigorate the study of the American West. Lamar's scholarly works and historians of the American West trained by Lamar have shaped the course of western historiography. The publication of his first book, Dakota Territory, was a crucial first step in Lamar's intellectual development and has been recognized as a major contribution to western history. Reviewing Dakota Territory five decades after its publication offers an opportunity to reflect on the arc of western history, one which might give pause to the current generation of western historians. |
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Dakota Territory entered the stream of western history at a logical point. At the time it was written, historians such as Earl Pomeroy were focusing on the American territorial system as a subject of study and Lamar's reliance on and respect for Pomeroy are unmistakable. Lamar's Dakota Territory and his subsequent book, The Far Southwest, "became models for subsequent explorations of the relatively neglected subject of territorial politics," according to David Weber.2 Lamar also waded into the Turner wars, although not as deeply as some historians. Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis about the importance of the frontier in American development had once been a near-truism among American historians. By the 1930s, however, Turner's thesis came under intense scrutiny, begetting what historian Allan Bogue called a "blood-drenched field" of historiography.3 After such battles, Michael Steiner justifiably deemed "Turner the most influential as well as the most reviled historian since Karl Marx."4 The impact of the historiographic turn against Turner is obvious in Lamar's book. |
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At present, few American historians study the territorial system, perhaps due to the general decline of institutional history, but the constant echoes of the Turner debate can still be heard within the sub-discipline of western history.5 The story of Dakota Territory can help historians understand the origins of this debate, which still resonates in western history. The ideological underpinnings of many of the western history books that line the library shelves are thus more readily understood. Lamar's scholarship subsequent to Dakota Territory and his reaction to the work of some of the students he helped to train also provide an important cautionary tale for those currently working in western history. |
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