History as a frontier town, and outfitter for travelers setting out on the santa fe trail. It was november 12, 1927 when the pioneer mother sculpture was dedicated in Penn Valley Park. It not only celebrates kansas citys pioneer history, but also as a tribute to those who suffered great hardship and loss while traveling across the plains and search of a better life. In her new book, pioneer mother monuments constructing cultural identity, historian Cynthia Prescott walks through more than a century of recognition and rediscovering a Pioneer Monuments erected across the nation, including those in the kansas city region. We are honored to have her here today to discuss her research. Dr. Prescott is an associate professor of history at the university of north dakota. Her research focuses on gender and the american west. Specifically intersections of gender, social class, and historical memory. Her work in these areas has been published in the journals in the journal of the west, historical review, and other publications. Genderts first book, and generation on the far western frontier, was published in 2007. It traces changing generals and ideology among early white settlers in oregon between 1845 and 1900. Academic focus and training are in social history, dr. Prescott also has a strong background in several areas of public history. Including Museum Curator ship, management, collection management, archival and rare book cataloging, and historic preservation. In short, she is the complete historian. Please join me in welcoming to the kansas city public library, Cynthia Prescott. [applause] good afternoon. Nearly 30,000 people reportedly attended the dedication of the pine or mother statue. Kansas City Residents soon forgot their bronze tribute to longsuffering frontiers women. Then in the 1980s, local residents rediscovered kansas citys connections to the western trail. Tracing the century long history of kansas city area pond you near monuments reveals the waxing and waning of frontier memory in this region and across the nation. The earliest Pioneer Monuments by which i defined pine or monument to be a sculpture, statue, or sculpture relays that is a piece of public art that is a tribute to and physically depicts frontier people. These are found throughout the country. There is a particularly dense concentration of them here in the kansas city area. The earliest of these Pioneer Monuments as i call them were put up beginning in the 1880s. And theresngly so following world war i. Those earliest monuments that were put up at the turnofthecentury were racialtly depicting a hierarchy in the west. This is at the same time that the confederate monuments we have been hearing so much about on the news being put up about the daughters of the confederacy and other groups in the south. Similar things are going on in the west. And people are putting up monuments that are explicitly depicting race in the west. City, thereas arent any really explicit depictions of racial hierarchy in the earliest monuments, at least not as evident as in some other locations. Kansas city one obvious one is the earliest statue that sort of fits this definition is the scout. Which was exhibited at the San Francisco worlds fair in 1915. Then it was being shipped back east i train and temporarily placed in Penn Valley Park after the fair ended. Kansas City Residents liked it so much, they raised nickels and dimes for a total of 15,000 to purchase a statue. And erected it in 1922 as a memorial to local indian tribes. Their similar sculptures being put up in the 1910s and 1920s. Generally depicting native people. Sort of a past tense thing. It is celebrated people who were assumed at the time to be a disappearing race. Thatl darwinism suggested to both to those civilized races which they assumed to be white in speaking people, would ultimately triumph through progress and native peoples would fade down to nothing. So tribute of this type were fairly common. Depictedies also sculptures and erected money ascetics closely depicted native people and white people towering over them. It is literally a hierarchy of races depicted. That sort of thing, nothing that explicit was erected in kansas city. Imagery focused on the istory of the first trade, between the interaction of the native people and the white settlers who are quite common. This was taken from a map of early westport, which was founded in 1812, which considers itself to be the birthplace of what is now the kansas city metro region. Westport was the First Community that actually wanted to put up a Pioneer Monument explicitly. They wanted to put up a lifesized wagon train to mark the centennial of the santa fe trail. They wanted to put this up in 1912. Marking the beginning of the open of the santa fe trail, which opened trade between the United States and mexico, shortly after mexico gained its independence from spain. Westport was located on the santa fe trail and had connections to the western migrations, california trail, oregon trail, mormon trail later on. It didnt actually make it into statues in kansas city. What does exist was more focused on native people in the past not native persons and into the 20 century. Please excuse me, my kids brought a cold home to me, so i am going to try not to sniffle in your ears. In the years after world war i, americans became increasingly interested in commemorating pioneer mothers explicitly. The earliest ones were white pioneer men dressed in buckskin, conquering western lands and native people. Beginning in about 1920, depictions of pioneer women explicitly depicted as pioneer mothers became popular. One of the earliest of these located here in kansas city. I have learned along the way that its difficult for me to time my visits to monument all over the country and get the lighting right. This one was not very well defined by the light. I by merrellulpted gage. I mentioned westport had wanted to put up a covered wagon sculpture. Business leaders and historically minded men got excited about the westport centennial. Then they lost interest. But a group of local women had formed the daughters of old westport to help promote the centennial. Dr. Prescott in the aftermath of the centennial celebration, in 1912, the they were determined to have a monument put up. They proceeded to do fundraising. They never reached the point of putting up a lifesize covered wagon. Which would have been a major undertaking. Instead, they looked to a more typical bottle for womens groups at the time. Which is to put a sculptural plaque, a bronze relief onto a bronze bas relief installed onto a large boulder. The daughters of the American Revolution are putting up similar kinds of trail markers at this time. The daughters of westport put up this one, sculpted by kansas sculptor merrell gage, in 1920. On the left you can see what was intended to be the front of the monument which says, to the pioneer mothers. It depicts mother with a young boy tugging at her skirt and a rifle in her hand. On the reverse theres an image merrell gage sculpted based on an old map. That image gets reproduced as well. Meanwhile, we see great interest in erecting a larger money meant monument to pioneer women in the kansas area. And a prominent western sculpture had prepared a model and one person said that kansas that he had to have it. He chose to erect a monument. The price at the time it was 40,000. It was so extravagant at the time that he did not want people to know how much she spent on this sculpture. It is a largerthanlife sculpture of a mother on horseback holding her infant. This was her pioneer husband guiding the pack horse. On the other can see a mountain man guide as well. Massive bronze monument. Very extensive. Very elaborate. It was placed in a location that he and the artist pick out. Today theres a highway that splits the park into and their hills. It is a sloped park. The west side of the highway is where the scout stands looking out, the indian scout i showed you earlier, looks out over the city of kansas city. The pioneer mother was placed on the other side, the hillside up above the world war i memorial, the national memorial. She does not actually gaze out literally over the city because she faces south. This was a point of contention often with these Pioneer Monuments. People believe it either needs to be gazing over the city or needs to be pointing westward because they are depicting women migrating west on the trail. Artists however tend to insist on having a face south because that is where the light is best and you can see their features better. In the case of kansas city, they went with the artistic location. Rather than the historically more precise. This is a sculpture proctor produced. This is the largest of the sculptures he produced for this purpose. In it, he wanted to emphasize womens suffering and hardship as well as their civilizing influence on what were perceived to be wild or savage lands. He borrowed imagery that may be familiar to you. This is the painting daniel boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap which bingham painted in 1851. This was an image reproduced throughout the country as print media became possible in the second half of the 19th century. It was imagery that was quite familiar to people in kansas city in the 1920s. Explicitly, then, aligning this pioneer mother with the virgin mary and mary the mother of jesus. And so religious imagery explicitly depicted in her sort of, plodding west. Like daniel boone here, showing similarly evoking the virgin mary as a pioneer woman in the Cumberland Gap. Proctor further reinforced this religious connection and emphasis on the womens sacrifice and following of her husbands lead, by placing around the base of this culture a text from the book of ruth, whether thou goest i will go, thy people shall be my people and thy god my god. The assumption here is that she and her husband are both christians. It is not that she is just following the christian god as a result of this. This is a passage that was oft quoted from the bible emphasizing ruths selfsacrifice and commitment to embracing values from the judeochristian tradition. So this is the most famous sculpture, and largest here in kansas city. But it is far from being the only pioneer mother sculpture put up in the 1920s and 30s. There are so many of them that i refer to it as the pioneer Mother Movement of these two decades. The other most famous, perhaps, are the 12 identical sculptures by August Leinbach that the daughters of the American Revolution erected across the country in 1928 and 1929. The dar had been erecting boulders with bronze relief pack plaques on them, text or imagery of the overland trails or both. They had also had a project where they were marking westward trails by painting telephone poles red, white, and blue the idea was that local chapters would maintain them. They began to realize that marking the western trails and there is a national old trails road that the dar at a national trails Road Association had mapped out that stretched to california. They wanted to mark the whole distance of it. But these lands to put up lots of markers soon proved impractical. Putting up bronze plaques every mile would be too expensive. Painting telephone poles is more affordable in the short run but hard to maintain. When youre relying on local chapters throughout the country. Instead they shifted gears and decided they would put up one sculpture per state. The trails would be marked by these largerthanlife sculptures of a pioneer mother. Unlike the old westport relief i showed you from years earlier, it features a woman with a rifle. When women are featured with rifles, it is never in the act of shooting. They are not intended to be out hunting or fighting people. It is the sign that they have it for protection, an indication that the west was an unsafe place for women. And emphasizes their, the hardships they were facing. So this shows them plodding westward. A few years later, topeka wanted to erect a pioneer mother on the state house lawn. They initially chose a sculptures similar to a much more famous when in ponca city, oklahoma which showed a young, attractive woman walking west, a young, attractive woman walking west, carrying a bible leading her young son by the topeka intended to erect the hand. Same one by the same sculpture. But the image featured up in Woman Holding a scythe. The people in topeka did not like this because to hold a scythe implied women were doing field labor. If you know any thing about pioneer history, women were doing fieldwork. In earlier spirit but the goal of the frontier peoples had been to maintain separate gender spheres. Men work in the fields and women worked in the home. They crossed those lines a lot in the early years on the frontier, but they do not like anyone to really talk about that. We want to erase that from our memory. So they replaced the bryant baker design with this one, by merrell gage, the same sculpture as the old westport relief from 15 years earlier, which again, shows woman with a rifle instead of a scythe. Oddly, you do not want women shooting guns anymore than you want them wielding a scythe. But it did not even cross her mind that you can perceive this as a woman going out to fight humans or even wild animals. At his and entirely defensive an entirelyis defensive tool for her. Right . And lest you think shes a strong woman, which the dar sculptures might have actually implied, gage sculpture for the kansas state house has her seated with her son reading a book, probably the bible though it is hard to tell the sculpture. And holding her baby. So by placing her in a chair, we have her in a domestic space. We have are resting from her labor. And we have her contained in a domestic sphere. And the rifle across her lap just in case her husband is away doing what manley men do in the forest. So this is the kind of imagery that gradually wins out across the country. But it sits well, i think, with the kansas city Penn Valley Park sculpture which shows her and west, and to the shows her on horseback. In reality, women walked along the trail. But increasingly in the 1920s and 1930s people get interested in depicting her, and iconic pioneer mother, riding in a covered wagon or in the case of kansas city, riding on a horse. Because even walking 2000 miles is a major undertaking. We do not even want to think about women doing that. We want to think about women being enclosed in the domestic space as much as possible. Theres an intention here that they are trying to protect her as being a proper woman. Protect her as a civilized woman, by placing her in spaces that are at least pseudodomestic or contained in some way. Interest in Pioneer Monuments declined significantly after world war ii. Most cities there were two dozen Pioneer Monuments put up in the 1920s and 1930s. Just a handful were put up in the decades following world war ii. When they did get put out there were no longer being placed in really prominent locations. Penn valley park in the heart of kansas city, or on the statehouse lawn. Instead they tended to appear in , smaller towns or suburbs trying to make a name for themselves. For example, Prairie VillageShopping Center, a brandnew postwar Shopping Center, right . This is where it is out in terms this is where it is at in , terms of civic life in the 1940s and 1950s and early 60s public life moved from the downtown city center, the Civic Center Areas to suburban areas. People are building new postwar suburbs. Getting in their car and driving people are to Shopping Centers, rather than being on foot in the city. So it made perfect sense to put a pioneer statue at the time it was placed at the entrance to the parking lot for the Shopping Center. A brandnew Shopping Center, but we are valuable with our local kansas roots, right . Because we have a pioneer family, mom, dad, and baby and a wagon wheel sitting at the entrance to our Shopping Center. It was much later when the Shopping Center changed hands and this piece would later move to the fountain in the Traffic Circle that you see here. Monuments in the postwar. Tended to depict a nuclear family. Occasionally mom and dad and baby like this one. This had appeared somewhat in the 1920s less frequently than the solo pioneer woman and her children. The family unit becomes more of an emphasis in the 1950s, as American Culture begins focusing on the nuclear family. Again, the part of moving to suburban life, rather than being a part of an extended kin network, people are to upsizing a nuclear family. Increasingly, instead of a baby they start depicting a young son. Eight years old or 10 years old or a teenager, who represents hope for the future. For the nation. Things began to change again in the 1970s. Dr. Prescott as the United States prepared to celebrate the bicentennial of american independence from Great Britain in 1976, the nation initially plannedthe government initially planned a federal nationwide celebration to be held in washington, d. C. Or philadelphia. No one could agree on what that should look like. This was at a time of growing identity politics, coming out of the 1960s and the early 1970s you have interest in africanamerican identity, interest in latino identity and so forth. The nation is more fragmented in the way that it chooses to remember itself. In the wake of those identity politics movements. Debate over vietnam and so forth. The bicentennial National Celebration sort of falls by the wayside. Instead they decide to put the resources behind encouraging l