Category: Pacific Northwest History Conference

What might have been

I was thinking about this blog post on my morning bike ride, and out of nowhere came a remark made by an old professor of mine about 50 years ago—“the United States has never been a melting pot, unless you think of it as all melting towards Anglo-American.” They are certainly not the exact words, but the sentiment is right, and it comes across strong as I read and reread AJ’s work.
For the past few weeks I have been concentrating on The Civil War in the American West in preparation for a talk at the Pacific Northwest History Conference in Tacoma last week. (Thanks, by the way, to good friends who came down from Seattle and over from Roslyn to fill chairs!) 
Again and again the idea that the westering thrust of US history is inevitable, and that Indians have had few choices in dealing with it comes through
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On the way to the academy

Back in April, I got notice that the theme for the Pacific Northwest History Association’s fall meeting in Tacoma, Washington was to be “The Civil War and Civil Rights.” As it happened, I was reading Alvin J’s The Civil War in the American West at the time, and remembered a passage in the Introduction claiming that the Civil War probably saw the decimation of more Indian tribes and the takeover of more Indian lands than any comparable period in American history. The conference’s prospectus didn’t mention Indians, so I wrote them a proposal saying I wanted to talk about Alvin, the War, and Invisible Indians.

And they accepted! All was well. It was on my calendar—six months and a summer-full of activities away. As things got closer, I assumed I would reread the Civil War book and miscellaneous other Josephy and Civil War material and prepare an outline, head to Tacoma next week, and talk for 25 minutes and leave
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