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Reviews
One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark
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By Colin G. Calloway
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University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2003. Illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 646 pages. $39.95 cloth.
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Reviewed by Theodore Binnema
University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George
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| Make room on the shelf. This is the inaugural volume of a planned six-volume history of the American West, and if the rest of the volumes meet the standard set by the first, you will want to own them all. If they are all as fat as this one, you will have to reserve about a foot and a half of shelf space for the set. It will be money (and space) well spent. Colin G. Calloway, a prominent historian at Dartmouth College, moves effortlessly from the ancient history of the West to the eve of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, from archaeological literature to documentary evidence, and from Ohio to California. |
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The purpose of the six-volume set will be to sum up the insights of the New Western Historians without neglecting earlier literature. This means that this series will be about the West as a conquered region (the trans-Mississippi West) rather than as a product of the process of frontier settlement. Calloway, understanding that the "West" before 1806 is hard to pin down, wisely chooses a larger canvas. He places the history of the trans-Appalachian West in a broad context that incorporates events and processes that occurred in areas of present-day Canada and Mexico. In several places, this aggressively anti-exceptionalist approach challenges common perceptions of events (of the Pueblo Revolt, for example). |
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Aside from its generous geographical boundaries, this book is important for its ambitious temporal scope. Calloway begins not with the Spanish but with the first "pioneers" — the ancestors of today's Indians. He emphasizes the significance of the expansion of corn agriculture long before the Spanish arrived. Calloway begins his discussion of the European invasion after only 118 pages, but thanks to the context established by the first two chapters, that invasion seems less momentous than much of the historiography sometimes implies. Societies emerged, flourished, waned and disappeared, fought, traded, and displaced one another long before Europeans arrived, and they continued to do so afterward. Thus, while this is not a history of the frontier in the traditional sense, Calloway points to "many frontiers — equestrian, epidemiological, technological, ecological, cultural tribal, and imperial" that have made the West what it is (p. 313). While not denying the legacy of conquest, Calloway reminds us that "empire building sometimes depended on negotiation and coexistence rather than force and coercion" (p. 319). |
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This book is also exceptional in the amount of oral evidence it presents. The title and subtitle forewarn readers that One Vast Winter Count is first and foremost a history of aboriginal people and that Calloway was clearly determined to include such evidence whenever possible. This oral evidence enhances the book significantly, although it appears to have posed occasional interpretive challenges. |
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One Vast Winter Count is likely to appeal to both professional historians and the general public. For the general public, Calloway takes on the role of a storyteller, often with a romantic streak. Scholars will appreciate the breadth of research. The book includes 161 pages of citations and bibliography, although researchers will have to cope with the fact that many of the works cited are not included in the selected bibliography. |
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In a short epilogue, Calloway anticipates that some Americans will find little of interest in the period B.L.C. (before Lewis and Clark). Yet, Calloway draws an interesting lesson from this period. He argues that "No one gets to be top dog forever. In looking back to Chaco and Cahokia in the eleventh century and to the Comanches and Cheyennes in the eighteenth century, we should see our future as clearly as Hamlet saw his in Yorick's skull" (p. 433). Whether you expect this book to take you back to the future or back to the West's ancient history, you will find yourself rewarded. |
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