The Forgotten Founders; Rethinking the History of the Old West

xxvii, [3], 237, [5] pages. Maps. Illustrations. Notes and Suggested Readings. Index. Signed with a sentiment on the fep. Inscription reads Best to a friend Stuart L. Udall Oct 2002. Laid in is Island Press information and an invitation to a Reception to hon Stewart L. Udall and to Celebrate the Publication of this book. Foreword by David M. Emmons. Stewart Lee Udall (January 31, 1920 - March 20, 2010) was an American politician and later, a federal government official who belonged to the Democratic Party. After serving three terms as a congressman from Arizona, he served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. After leaving government service in 1969, Udall taught for a year at the School of Forestry at Yale University as a visiting professor of environmental humanism. He later devoted his time to writing books and articles about environmental issues and to practicing law. In 1971, he published America's Natural Treasures: National Nature Monuments and Seashores, which is about America's national parks, monuments, and reserves. Udall was presented with the Ansel Adams Award in 1986. He also was awarded the United Nations Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement. Udall received the Common Cause Public Service Achievement Award for his lifelong protection of the environment and defense of American citizens who were victims of nuclear weapons testing. David M. Emmons, professor of history at the University of Montana, was the author of Garden in the Grasslands: The Boomer Literature of the Central Plains. The Forgotten Founders is a gem that encompasses virtually every aspect of the development of our region." -ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS. "[Udall] offers a convincing argument that it wasn't the cavalry, fur traders, prospectors, gunslingers or railroad builders who tamed the West; it was 'courageous men and women who made treks into wilderness and created communities in virgin valleys.' Udall's spare prose adds impact to his words." -THE SEATTLE TIMES. For most Americans, the "Wild West" popularized in movies and pulp novels -- a land of intrepid traders and explorers, warlike natives, and trigger-happy gunslingers -- has become the true history of the region. The story of the West's development is a singular chapter of history, but not, according to former Secretary of the Interior and native westerner Stewart L. Udall. In The Forgotten Founders, Stewart Udall draws on his vast knowledge of and experience in the American West to make a compelling case that the key players in western settlement were the sturdy families who traveled great distances across forbidding terrain to establish communities there. He offers an illuminating and wide-ranging overview of western history and those who have written about it, challenging conventional wisdom on subjects ranging from Manifest Destiny to the importance of Eastern capitalists to the role of religion in westward settlement. Stewart Udall argues that the overblown and ahistorical emphasis on a "wild west" has warped our sense of the past. For the mythical Wild West, Stewart Udall substitutes a compelling description of an Old West, the West before the arrival of the railroads, which was the home place for those he calls the "wagon people," the men and women who came, camped, settled, and stayed. He offers a portrait of the West not as a government creation or a corporate colony or a Hollywood set for gold seekers and gun fighters but as primarily a land where brave and hardy people came to make a new life with their families. From Native Americans to Franciscan friars to pioneers, these were the true settlers, whose goals, according to Stewart Udall were "amity not conquest; stability, not strife; conservation, not waste; restraint, not aggression." The Forgotten Founders offers a provocative new look at one of the most important chapters of American history, rescuing the Old West and its pioneers from the margins of history where l.…