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Old West : discover how the west tamed America

Old West Cottonwood | Jedediah Smith | Sacred lands | Viejo California to NEW | Lost gold hidden loot | Crazy? | Humble origins

Start you.tube Dances with wolves (soundtrack)


from the ashes, we rise


How the West tamed America


Return to Cottonwood Page


Midi courtesy of
~Michael Appert's collection~
theme from
Dances With Wolves
starring Kevin Costner
and Graham Greene
Americans have long been enchanted by the story of our nation's West, but what is often missed, is that beneath the popular tales and stereotypes, there is a saga of stamina and sheer survival with roots deeper than most of the public would imagine. Horace Greeley quoted the Bible: God creates in order to populate. (Isaiah 45: 18). But where would the populators come from? They weren't all "yankees" like in some fifties TV western. MANY backgrounds were represented. Here, for you to peruse, are a range of links to articles and pictures around the web.
You may find the truth as inspiring as fiction.


pictures Our West has MANY stories

ONLINE RESOURCES

plains indian
Primordial North American Spirituality

I. WINTU AND OTHER INDIGENOUS PEOPLES LINKS

Alice Shepherd, Wintu Texts : (heyday)

The soreness of the land - a wintu wise woman

Bird with Wounded Wing - Trinity Wintu

Wintu (and related) Online Links Page

Wintu Indian Language (Wintun, Patwin)

When native and euro first met

In My Own Words (Alice Shepherd: Grace Mckibben)

Winnemem Wintu (northern wintu band)

Decimation, California Indians

Wintu petition and the federal process

Wintu society - nutshell description

Native Americans, James Logan, and Stenton

Native empowerment - a long view

Navajo code-talkers: tribute to a hero

The Wintu share their land with "yapytu"

Wisdom of the Great Chiefs

Who were the real "savages"

The Naomi Lang Story (Karuk)

Wintu & Neighbors, book

The Kon Kow Peoples of northern California

Article California Indians' Suffering

Gold, Greed, and Genocide -- book review

Sacred Circle - Native American Spirituality

Hopi Prophecy - Native American Spirituality

Early 20th century Native American authors

Friends of Indians reap hate from whites

Ballad of Ira Hayes

Navajo Struggle by Lewiston's George McColm




II. CALIFORNIA AND OVERLAND TRAIL LINKS

Mormon role in the West

California Missions

California History links

Oregon/ California Trail

San Francisco Museum Site

Nuestra Historia, Los Angeles

Discovering John Bidwell

Old West History

Gold Prospecting links

Buried treasure and lost gold stashes

Gold Country (Malakoff)

Gold Rush Fever

Delta Steamboats

California History (LaPlaza)

Ayer y Hoy, Catholic Faith in California

Los Californios [museumca]

Los Californios [pbs]

Loreto, capital de las Californias

Antigua California: Mission and Colony, 1697-1768

La 2da Compañía de las Californias en la Plaza
del Reál Presidio de San Diego
[re-enactors]

Old California to new : Sutter - dreamer & schemer

Lewis and Clark: the history-making expedition

Old West Links - Overland Trail

The Mormon Trail : our history

Old West Links

Mormon Trail (Nebraska Site)

Old West History (Nebraska Site)

Mormon Cowboy : story of a song

Overland Trail, links

California Republic`s Mormon governor

Oregon Trail story

The indispensable Oregon (California) Trail

Oregon history

Wagon Train re-enactment

El Centro's Overland Trail Links

Competencia de Los Vaqueros

Cottonwood, the settlement that opened the door

California's Mother Lode, Reenactors & Events

Por Señor P.B. Reading de los Estados Unidos
the original grant from Gob. Micheltoreña


eddie and heather gist

III. OUR FRIENDS: OTHER OLD WEST LINKS

Jedediah Strong Smith, the greatest of them all

COAX's African Americans in the Wild West

California African American Museum

Forbestown - an enchanting little Gold Rush Town

Scott Shepherd - Fantasy Camp Lone Ranger

Red Bluff Round Up - every April

Jim Janke's Old West links

History Reference Site

Bar - D Ranch CowboyPoetry.com

An All-American Epic

Cowboy Showcase

Black cowboy, man or myth

Minnesota Old West Society

Museum of NE Colorado

Buffalo Bill Museum

Remembering Lane Frost

Buffalo Soldiers and black cowboy links

Pendleton OR RoundUp - September

Calgary Stampede - July 6-15

Redding CA Rodeo - May 2001

Rowell Ranch Rodeo

Bob Shepherd's outstanding western art

Art Burton's Wild West

LDS Old West Tidbits

Ghost Towns

FourMile, South Dakota

Clanton Gang, Tombstone AZ

James Stogner's page, lots of graphics

Jeremiah Johnson Cowboy Poet

CalNeva: Cowboys

First White Man thru the California Mountains

The simple rugged folk who truly built America



The West led the Way for Women's Suffrage

Alice Paul - women's right to vote


African Americans on the Western Frontier

Billington and Hardaway African Americans on the Western Frontier by Monroe Lee Billington and Roger D. Hardaway.

During the last half of the nineteenth century, several thousand African Americans moved to the American western frontier. Before the Civil War, some went west to California as slaves of gold miners and to Utah as slaves of Mormons. Later, free black men joined the U.S. Army and served in frontier outposts while others were hired on as cowboys on western ranches and cattle trails. Once Reconstruction ended in the South, discrimination and segregation caused more African Americans to seek better opportunities elsewhere where prejudice was less evident.

The significant role played by African Americans in the settlement and development of the West has largely been ignored and neglected until now. African Americans on the Western Frontier remedies that historic neglect with fifteen essays that explore the contributions that African American men and women made to the western frontier-as miners, homesteaders, town builders, entrepreneurs, and as ordinary, civic-minded citizens.


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Clash of Two Cultures
Acknowledging a Tragic Collision

two distinct anthropologies ~ two ways of life
Guenter Lewy writes:

The violent collision between whites and America's native population was probably unavoidable. Between 1600 and 1850, a dramatic surge in population led to massive waves of emigration from Europe, and many of the millions who arrived in the New World gradually pushed westward into America's seemingly unlimited space. No doubt, the 19th-century idea of America’s"manifest destiny" was in part a rationalization for acquisitiveness, but the resulting dispossession of the Indians was as unstoppable as other great population movements of the past. The U.S. government could not have prevented the westward movement even if it had wanted to.

In the end, the sad fate of America's Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy, involving an irreconcilable collision of cultures and values. Despite the efforts of well-meaning people in both camps, there existed no good solution to this clash. The Indians were not prepared to give up the nomadic life of the hunter for the sedentary life of the farmer. The new Americans, convinced of their cultural and racial superiority, were unwilling to grant the original inhabitants of the continent the vast preserve of land required by the Indians’ way of life. The consequence was a conflict in which there were few heroes, but which was far from a simple tale of hapless victims and merciless aggressors. To fling the charge of genocide at an entire society serves neither the interests of the Indians nor those of history.

For More : Clash of Two Cultures


Buffalo Soldier and a Warrior (Brief Encounter)

brief encounter

No room for racism

give us men

Gold Rush California

Patrick's Shamrock
Honoring the Irish

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Latter Day Saints (Mormons)

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Bob Shepherd