After the pioneers
05/08/16 04:32
According to Wikipedia, (in other words I didn’t do any significant research here), It was John Baboon Lane Soule, who in an 1851 editorial in the Terre Haute (Indiana) Express, wrote, ‘Go west young man, and grow up with the country.” The more famous American author and newspaper editor Horace Greeley picked up the quote and used it in his own editorial in 1865. I grew up hearing that quote over and over again. We considered ourselves to be Westerners, but we considered all of those east of our state to be not truly western. The Dakotas, where I now live, were only “midwestern” in my childhood evaluation. We lived in the land of rodeos, huge unfenced expanses of government pasture, mountains with peaks that rose above the treeline, and the continental divide running through our state. We were a bit elitist about our mountains and didn’t consider the Black Hills to measure up. And we were elitist about our Western heritage and wanted to claim something exclusive about our state’s brand of ranchers. In the days of my growing up, considerable lip service was paid to the pioneers in our county. Our local paper was called “The Pioneer.” The ranches and grazing permits that were still in the same families that originally had homesteaded were known as pioneer ranches. The nursing home was called “Pioneer Home,” and the hospital “Pioneer Medical Center.”
We claimed to be of pioneer stock even if our families had only been in the county for a few years before we were born. Those of us born in that town felt ourselves to be directly connected to the pioneers and when we said “pioneer” we weren’t talking about the first people to live in the area. We were talking about the homesteaders and cattlemen who settled the land as it was forcibly confiscated from the indigenous people of the area, mostly the Crow tribe.
There were a lot of shortcomings to the version of Montana history that we learned in school.
We now know that the pioneer lifestyle was never sustainable. It was based on the principles of unlimited growth, sprawl and high energy consumption, sucking up resources as fast as possible wrestling land from others through competition and then moving on.
Of course growth is never truly unlimited. Resources are finite. And eventually the realities of geography mean that there won’t always be a place to which to move on.
It isn’t a surprise that I know several people from my home town who eventually moved on to Alaska to experience “the last frontier.”
We were, after all, of pioneer stock. We were tough, self-reliant and able to make our way in the world without being connected to the products and riches of cities.
Our hunger to always have more, however, seems to be as strong as ever. My classmates and colleagues enjoy complaining about the challenges we have faced. “It was easier for our parents,” we claim. We showed up after all of the good land was taken. By the time we came along, the slogan “go west” no longer applied. The west was already taken and filled up with people.
It probably is no mistake that I seem to have settled in the Black Hills on land that was among the last to be confiscated from Native Americans. It was opened for settlement after most of my home state had been claimed by homesteaders. Even though it is a bit south and east of my home territory, it might be close enough to retain a bit of that pioneer image with which I grew up.
Now that I am an adult, however, the time has come for me to think differently. The time has come for me to think about future generations and ways of living that are sustainable for the land and for communities of people. The pioneer ways of the west belong to the past.
The “Lone Ranger” go-it-alone attitude needs to find new ways of cooperation with others. If we are to meet the challenges of this century, we will need to find ways to work together. If we choose to only compete for the limited resources, we will certainly come up short. Some people will definitely loose out if we don’t all learn to share. Under conditions of scarcity there can be no frenzy of uncontrolled growth or waste of resources. We will be called to discover new efficiencies in our modes of travel and of working the land.
As we discover these new ways of being and of living with our neighbors we need to be careful not to throw out the values of our forebears that we treasure. Not all of the pioneer ways were bad and not all of them should be discarded. Values like helping the neighbors, stewardship of the land, and a basic conservatism when it comes to the management of resources all have a place in the new society that is emerging. Courage and a sense of adventure are always required for people to progress. The appreciation for the beauty and value of the land will continue to be critical for each new generation of people.
But we might also need to learn how to stay put for more than a few seasons. We might also need to think in terms of multiple generations instead of measuring our success by direct comparison with our parents and neighbors only. We might need to discard some of the intense competitiveness with which we grew up in order to understand that we’re all in this together.
Maybe we need some new slogans. “Go West” might be replaced with “Build for your grandchildren.” “The grass is greener” might need to be replaced with “grow green where you are.” As always, however, it will take more than slogans. It will take people who are serious about developing sustainable ways of farming, sustainable economies and sustainable communities. It will take people who are willing to put investment ahead of short term profits.
It will take a whole new spirit: respecting while daring to be different from the last wave of pioneers on this land.
We claimed to be of pioneer stock even if our families had only been in the county for a few years before we were born. Those of us born in that town felt ourselves to be directly connected to the pioneers and when we said “pioneer” we weren’t talking about the first people to live in the area. We were talking about the homesteaders and cattlemen who settled the land as it was forcibly confiscated from the indigenous people of the area, mostly the Crow tribe.
There were a lot of shortcomings to the version of Montana history that we learned in school.
We now know that the pioneer lifestyle was never sustainable. It was based on the principles of unlimited growth, sprawl and high energy consumption, sucking up resources as fast as possible wrestling land from others through competition and then moving on.
Of course growth is never truly unlimited. Resources are finite. And eventually the realities of geography mean that there won’t always be a place to which to move on.
It isn’t a surprise that I know several people from my home town who eventually moved on to Alaska to experience “the last frontier.”
We were, after all, of pioneer stock. We were tough, self-reliant and able to make our way in the world without being connected to the products and riches of cities.
Our hunger to always have more, however, seems to be as strong as ever. My classmates and colleagues enjoy complaining about the challenges we have faced. “It was easier for our parents,” we claim. We showed up after all of the good land was taken. By the time we came along, the slogan “go west” no longer applied. The west was already taken and filled up with people.
It probably is no mistake that I seem to have settled in the Black Hills on land that was among the last to be confiscated from Native Americans. It was opened for settlement after most of my home state had been claimed by homesteaders. Even though it is a bit south and east of my home territory, it might be close enough to retain a bit of that pioneer image with which I grew up.
Now that I am an adult, however, the time has come for me to think differently. The time has come for me to think about future generations and ways of living that are sustainable for the land and for communities of people. The pioneer ways of the west belong to the past.
The “Lone Ranger” go-it-alone attitude needs to find new ways of cooperation with others. If we are to meet the challenges of this century, we will need to find ways to work together. If we choose to only compete for the limited resources, we will certainly come up short. Some people will definitely loose out if we don’t all learn to share. Under conditions of scarcity there can be no frenzy of uncontrolled growth or waste of resources. We will be called to discover new efficiencies in our modes of travel and of working the land.
As we discover these new ways of being and of living with our neighbors we need to be careful not to throw out the values of our forebears that we treasure. Not all of the pioneer ways were bad and not all of them should be discarded. Values like helping the neighbors, stewardship of the land, and a basic conservatism when it comes to the management of resources all have a place in the new society that is emerging. Courage and a sense of adventure are always required for people to progress. The appreciation for the beauty and value of the land will continue to be critical for each new generation of people.
But we might also need to learn how to stay put for more than a few seasons. We might also need to think in terms of multiple generations instead of measuring our success by direct comparison with our parents and neighbors only. We might need to discard some of the intense competitiveness with which we grew up in order to understand that we’re all in this together.
Maybe we need some new slogans. “Go West” might be replaced with “Build for your grandchildren.” “The grass is greener” might need to be replaced with “grow green where you are.” As always, however, it will take more than slogans. It will take people who are serious about developing sustainable ways of farming, sustainable economies and sustainable communities. It will take people who are willing to put investment ahead of short term profits.
It will take a whole new spirit: respecting while daring to be different from the last wave of pioneers on this land.