May 10, 2001

Plains Folk: Plan to Make History

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

After you’ve taught American history to the freshmen of some 50 terms, 200 at a time, you start to mess with things for your own amusement.

One way to keep matters interesting is to make nineteen-year-olds from the plains read Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville. The same protests always come up: This book is really old. The author is French. He talks weird. He doesn’t like Americans. Who does he think he is? Why do we have to read this anyway?

I can’t just say, "Because it makes things more interesting for me." So I tell the reluctant readers, the reason you hate Tocqueville is the same reason you had to move out of your parents’ home–because they are on to you, they know too much about you.

For these kids on the plains, I particularly recommend Tocqueville’s chapter on how historians think, how they explain things. Aristocratic historians, the author tells us, believe history is made by elites. Great men have the great ideas. Great men make things happen. Democratic historians believe that history is made by broad causes and ordinary people. Large forces produce the eras, trends, and conflicts. People respond and make history.

So, what kind of historians are we on the plains? Democratic, mainly. And generally, that’s a good thing. But not always.

Plains folk commonly think of themselves as knocked around by large, impersonal forces like weather, markets, consumerism, environmentalism–well, it’s quite a list. Historians call things like these "determinisms." Only now and then do people in the region get swell-headed enough that they try to buck the trends and practice self-determination.

The plains today are in a state of what people around the world call "post-colonialism." Ever since the Choteaus, the Astors, and the Company of Adventurers started mining this region for beaver pelts, we’ve been working for people somewhere else most of the time. Nowadays, though, things have shifted. Changes in communications, transportation, and tastes open up new sorts of opportunities.

Here’s a maxim for these post-colonial times. You have to have a plan for your country, because if you don’t, someone else will.

Read "My Life on the Plains," and you see that George A. Custer had a plan for this country. He looked out on the prairies, which (as did so many easterners) he likened to the ocean, and said the country should no longer be called "the Great American Desert." Hereafter, he said, call it "The Plains." He renamed the place, thus taking possession–and justifying clearing out the natives, who might have to be killed, but at a minimum would have to live like whites.

Then read the writings of Frank and Deborah Popper. They looked out on the prairies and said the country no longer should be called the Plains. Hereafter, they said, call it "the Buffalo Commons." They renamed the place, thus justifying clearing out the natives, not proposing to kill any of them, but insisting they should go elsewhere and live like the rest of the country.

The natives killed Custer, but lost the country. Their successors made things pretty hot for the Poppers, too, but they can’t count on doing much better in the long run.

Here’s the problem. Sometimes great men, or now I should say great people, do make history. They have plans. They move swiftly, like cavalry. Democracy, though, is slow.

You freshmen from Sharon Springs, Swift Current, Sentinel Butte: Think fast.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865, gmoran@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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