Description
Book Synopsis
This book examines the ideal of wilderness preservation in the United States from the antebellum era to the first half of the twentieth century, showing how the early conception of the wilderness as the place where Indians lived (or should live) gave way to the idealization of uninhabited wilderness. It focuses on specific policies of Indian removal developed at Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier national parks from the early 1870s to the 1930s.
Trade Review
Dispossessing the Wilderness has many virtues. Accurate, detailed accounts of the creation of Yellowstone and Glacier national parks rest on solid research, as does the story at Yosemite. * The Journal of American History *
Adding to recent scholarship exploring the cultural construction of nature, this succinct study opens up new areas of research in park service scholarship and paves the way for a more comprehensive study of the role and place of Native Americans in the national parks * The Historian *
Table of Contents
Introduction: From Common Ground 1: Looking Backward and Westward: The "Indian Wilderness" in the Antebellum Era 2: The Wild West, or Toward Separate Islands 3: Before the Wilderness: Native Peoples and Yellowstone 4: First Wilderness: America's Wonderland and Indian Removal from Yellowstone National Park 5: Backbone of the World: The Blackfeet and the Glacier National Park Area 6: Crowning the Continent: The American Wilderness Ideal and Blackfeet Exclusion from Glacier National Park 7: The Heart of the Sierras, 1864-1916 8: Yosemite Indians and the National Park Ideal, 1916-1969 Conclusion: Exceptions and the Rule
