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 Village Shopping 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 local history celebrations. So, state and local level commemorations. This leads to renewed interest in all sorts of American History. People getting interested in colonial history, quilting, remembering the 19th century as well even though it is not part of the story of u. S. Independence in 1776. Many communities particularly in the midwest, get interested in celebrating their frontier heritage. And pioneer stories become an important thing people want to tell. As part of that project, the city of wichita erected this pioneer woman known as heritage woman. She was placed in a newly formed heritage park, a pocket park behind the county Historical Society museum. And the former carnegie library. This represented an ode to women who walked west on the frontier trail. But rather than depicting her in a sun bonnet with a rifle, Richard Bergen decided to depict her preparing to bathe in a kansas stream, to wash off the dust he thought. He is borrowing from long traditions of female nudes that were seen as being central to many aspects of fine art, especially sculpture. But it is more stylized than what would have been done as modernist cultural in 1915. So bergen was merging that Classical Tradition of nude sculpture with more avantgarde movements that were going into more stylized directions in the 1960s and 1970s. This interest in local history and inclusivity of lots of stories, encourage people to put up the monument. People thought it was quite lovely. In 1976. Fastforward to the early 2000s. And people started to have a problem with the sculpture, it appears. Because three times in the last 15 years, this culture has been severely vandalized. Hands chopped off, this culture toppled. They had to remove it for major restoration work several times. We do not know who attacked this sculpture. They did not leave a manifesto on exactly why they did so. But i think the suggested i think this suggests that people are not so happy with up in which a woman is nude, at least not in wichita right now. [laughter] to my knowledge no one has attacked another pioneer woman or nudes a halfmile away. This one is called hardship and dreams a more traditional depiction of a pioneer woman in a sun bonnet, carrying a satchel and leading her son by the hand. This is by 1984. Wichita had embraced by 1994 wichita embraced sculptures about the 1920s. Wichita and other smaller or midsize cities start direct to erect monuments like this one in the 1990s that harken back to that 1920s pioneer Mother Movement. So many that one could almost argue theres a second pioneer Mother Movement that started in the 1990s. Meanwhile, in other places, people start having a problem with pioneer imagery. Portland oregon, San Francisco, places known for being particularly politically progressive at least part of , their populations in progressive, people start complaining about or protesting new or older monuments as not being sufficiently inclusive of local native populations or are expressing concern about celebrating forced removal of native peoples. Wichita did not seem too concerned about that part. The more conservative communities are saying no, no we have to stick to the traditional imagery. We still want grandma in a sun bonnet while other places are saying, hey you cannot put those things up. We do not need grandma anymore we need to recognize the larger implications of what grandma did. A number of communities do put up monuments. I argue that a number of them were being motivated to promote heritage tourism. In round rock, texas they put up a huge installation, and this is going to attract people to our a historichich was site, a stream crossing on the chisholm trail, were cattle were driven in the late 19th century. Today it is just an x urban vegan created to the city of austin. But by embracing the pioneer history, they are able to pitch themselves. Similar things are happening in kansas city. Westport once again gets interested in that pioneer mother monument in Penn Valley Park. By the 1980s, this section of Penn Valley Park had become rather seedy. The monument itself had become overgrown. You cannot really see it there was a parking lot and path to it but it got overgrown. , and there was a sense that this beautiful monument was falling into neglect and had been forgotten. So some Community Leaders in , westport petitioned to move the sculpture from Penn Valley Park to a more heavily visited location in downtown westport. Which as i mentioned early on considers itself to be the birthplace of kansas city. It was on the santa fe trail. It was on the overland trail, and the oregon california trails as well. There were really interested in putting the monument where they thought it would be seen and conveniently, also help draw tourists to their Historic Sites as well. This did not go over well with the city of kansas city. Who was quite content to forget the thing was there until some one else decided to claim it. Somebody says we forget it is there until some one else says, hey wait, we wants that. And now, no,t. No, that is our monument. Kansas city says no, we are not going to do that. The park board says the owner, and the artist specifically chose the site for this must be full sculpture. It would demean this culture to move it to a small little park in a crowded area. In old westport. It needs to stay where it is. Westport lost the battle a second time. They had wanted it in the 1920s and again in the 1980s. They responded by finally erecting a more elaborate monument of their own. Still not as big as the one in Penn Valley Park. They put up their own monument to westport related people. Notably they abandoned the , pioneer mother and put up a sculpture of three men. Who are all much more associated with commerce than family settlement. The men depicted here are a rur trader and the founder westport founder, john c mccoy. The founder of the pony express, and a western merchant and mountain man who retired to westport in the 1850s. These are big names in this area. These are prominent men. If we cannot have a generic iconic pioneer mother, thats fine. We will respond by saying, no, we have a real claim. Because these three important men came from here or lived here at some time. This of the identity choices theyre making in the creation of this monument. That is a short version of that story. If you want a longer version of that story you can buy my book. [laughter] meanwhile, other communities outside the city boundaries of kansas city also got interested in promoting heritage tourism in the 1980s and 1990s. Independence was interested in promoting its history. Independence has two big claims to fame. As a jumping off point for the oregon and california trails. And it is the home of president harry truman. Harry truman happens to be heavily involved in the project to mark the national old trails road that led to those daughters of the American Revolutions statues being put up in the 1920s. Is a 20th century political figure but he had a profound interest in the trails as well. They erected a National Frontier trails museum. And they put up a pioneer mother sculpture in the courtyard. To evoke the struggle and hardships of pioneer women. This is something that happened pretty often in this time. That if you want to put up a museum at a Historic Site but you do not have, like it would be great if you had trail ruts to show. For your overland trail museum but if you do not have actualtheyre not many things actually survive. But trail ruts to survive. And they did survive in some places where trails were crowded into a narrow area and wagon wheels carved narrow marks come outside boise, idaho for sample. There places where these persist. But in urban areas like independence and kansas city, not so much. They do not have a Historic Building nor did they have ruts to point to the trail. So putting up a bronze monument helps evoke the history that has. Een lost so this was sculpted by mexicans sculptor Juan Lombardo rivera. Some women in independence raise the money to erect this and they tribute to the all the women in independence and those who passed through independence on the trails west. The sculptor made the design, had it cast, and in keeping with the art tradition of culture at at the time, he chose to add color to it, what we call a patina to the outside of the bronze. He chose the color blue, it is associated with the virgin mary, associated with loyalty and so forth. And it is a color often evoked with paintings of pioneer women throughout much of the 20th century. The story evoking again, the virgin mary. But the women of independence were kind of horrified when this sculpture arrived. They felt the color that the mexican sculptor had chosen was too garish for our pioneer mother. Classical sculpture did have color, it is just faded over time. We think of as white marble was originally painted. Arguing this is a Classical Tradition and i am part of the revival of the classic tradition. The ladies of westport are saying we do not need anybody tacky, we do not need anything too bold or brash. My words not theirs. Once it was outofthebox and out of the bubble wrap, they took a closer look and said maybe does is not so bad. Over time, the patina faded as happens. By the time i visited this so in 1990 independence get the National Frontier. Other communities in the area start to Pay Attention and jumping on the bandwagon. Shawnee erected a Pioneer Crossing in what we believe was a used car lot. Of concern about this. They did not like the price tag. If memory serves me right it was , 1. 5 million. We dont need anything this elaborate. It is a little bit hard to see what is going on here. This was sculpted into stone and concrete. Kind of a relief of a wagon train. This is a bronze sculpture freestanding of a pioneer woman. Again, the sun bonnet, and a blue patina, similar to the one that had caused a ruckus in independence 25 years earlier. This sculpture is mixed media. It emerges out of the stone into bronze to show the wagon teams. There is a wagon master nearby as well. Nearby, i think it is olathe . Is that right . Ok. Olathe wanted to mark their history. They sought to mark their connection to the commercial traffic on the santa fe trail. They are focused on commerce. They have placed this next to a Stagecoach Stop and museum. They chose a local kansas city sculptor to do this. He was born and trained in china before immigrating to the United States. His depiction of a stagecoach is more culturally inclusive than any other Pioneer Monument i have found. I have found about 200 of them so far. This one has fairly standard imagery. It is a stagecoach rather than a covered wagon, but otherwise a similar notion of pulling the conveyance, then you have people stagecoach people of , various ages and people of different ethnicities. On top of the people who are crowded into the stagecoach, literally piled on top of the stagecoach are some people of color. You have an africanamerican couple and a latino person on top of the stagecoach riding on the outside. And you have a native American Woman waving farewell to the travelers. Interestingly, the native person is depicted as being present rather than having been removed. She is waving to people as they go further west. Perhaps good riddance. Im not sure. Then there is an angloamerican, a white American Woman and her son look like they are trying to board if they can squeeze themselves in there somehow. The boy holds in his hand an origami crane that then it the it evokes birds that are flying overhead. I have not been able to find any that origamihis wouldve been practiced in the 19th century here. I dont know how common it was among boys in japan in the 1850s. This suggests to me that he was not comfortable depicting asianamericans despite the fact that there was a substantial chinese population recruited to the west to help build the railroad. That is not a history he felt comfortable including in his stagecoach. It does not fit with local perceptions of the west. I think the origami crane is his wave to asian people who are not physically depicted in the monument. Lots of communities around here are setting up these monuments. But not everybody likes them as equally. We talked a moment ago about this very blue woman in independence. She was stolen in 1913 excuse me, 2013 and cut up and that thieves attempted to sell her for scraps. Fortunately someone recognize the human hands in the bucket of bronze, and they refused to accept it. That scrap dealer had security cameras on site. Although they turned the person away at the time, they did not attempt a citizens arrest like we would may be think people did in the 19th century, whether they did or not is a different question, of course, anyway, but they did report this to the authorities and the three people were apprehended and two of them ended up going to jail. Independence then vowed we will replace her. Three years later they captured ini think she was installed 2017. 20 seamen teen courtyard her from a to what was argued to be a more secure location. Yes and no. You could pull up to the parking lot and tried to grab her. I was there this morning, and there was no one around while i was there on sunday morning. But she is in a location where there are lights and security cameras. I guess the idea is to put her in a location where it would be more obvious if somebody tried to still her. Conveniently, it makes her more prominent. Rather than being tucked away in a courtyard where you might not notice her, where they had to have a sign to tell you to look , now she isourtyard in a prominent location. This is embracing what, increasingly historical museums in the west are doing, which is putting bronze statues in front as a traffic statute. Just to draw people in. Thinking, that looks cool, now i have to see what is nearby. Ok. Over these 100 years we have seen a rise and fall in the interest in these Pioneer Monuments. We can see what they need, what they should look like, what their future should be. Overall, it seems to be that campus city is embracing these that the city is embracing these monuments. This is not that much different i would argue then what they were trying to do when they were try to put kansas city on the map for fine art. Not that different than what was trying to be deniers ago. I did not have time to tell all the stories. I did not even touch on all the ones in this area. But if you would like to know more, you can check out my book, i will be signing books afterwards if youre interested. I have also created a website. This you can do for free. It has information about different monuments you can search or browse by location. You can also look at the highlights tab that has individual locations. I have some images of different monuments up there. Not all of them are pictured yet. Every time i been someplace, i have been to kansas city twice, and every time i leave, one month later, i stumble on something online that i did not know was there. I was out there visiting the one independence because the last time i came, they cast her but she was not in place yet, so i did not get to see her. The photos i am taking this weekend i will upload them so you can see more. My website has an interactive map and timeline. Up at the top it has a timeline you can drag across with your mouse and watch where they pop up over time in space, to get a sense of how these patterns are shifting geographically over time. I am also involved in an app called cleo. Is anyone familiar with it . It seems to be kind of the yelp of historical sites. I think at last count they had 35,000 sites on there. They have individual sites. Its an app on your phone or you can do it on your computer and from home. You can visit these places. It will guide you. It has a mapping feature that will guide you to these locations. I am in the process of putting my 200 monuments up there, i currently have less than half of them up, but i am in the process of writing those pages. I am using the Mapping Software to build walking and heritage tours. If you want to check out all the monuments in the kansas city area, you can go to cleo, or the link in my website and you can visit them. Either if you want to spend a few hours driving around the kansas city area getting to know the road, or you can do it virtually. Enjoy your heritage tour from the comfort of your own home. With that, i will stop talking and i would love to hear your questions. [applause] please use the microphone if you would like to ask a question. Thank you for coming to kansas city. I have always enjoyed pioneer mother. I am curious about fashion and stuff. You talked about the site that was not used, rifles, one was a bucket. Everyone seems to have a bonnet. Was there any themes to these fashions used in the monuments . Prof. Prescott the most consistent element is the the sunbonnet sort of evokes the clothing of that time period. And prairie style dress goes with it, but the sunbonnet is the thing that most people get excited about. An oilman in oklahoma sponsored a nationwide competition to erect a monument in ponca city, oklahoma. He directed that it had to be a woman in a sunbonnet. People talk about sunbonnet a lot, that was in the 1920s. So, the sunbonnet, and also the covered wagons cover, sort of serving as a halo over her head. I think there is a halo element to the covered wagon. Also, it emphasizes her whiteness. Women used these to protect them from the sun. You wanted to keep your skin pale and white. There was a racial component to it. The only exception to those, there were a few sculptors that preferred to put her in a headscarf, over her head or just around her shoulders. Mormon sculptor, the one that comes to mind for that, and that tends to be evoking virgin mary. What belongs in her hands and whether she has children is or more contested and more debated. There has been hot debate about the one in ponca city, which i wish i had brought a slide to show you today. Most of the artists intend that. Some axis that should explicitly put a cross on it to indicate a civilizing element her role in , bringing white civilization to an untamed land, to use their language at the time. Satchel, sheo a tends to either have a satchel or a a. She needs some kind of a burden. She has to look like shes working at it. She needs to be weighted down by her responsibility, but she needs something that contains civilization. So a bag, a little satchel, or a baby or a son that embodies hope for the future can serve a similar purpose as well. You have mentioned the controversy surrounding the monuments over time, and the vandalizing that is taking place and actually stealing and scrapping the monuments. I wonder if you have any observations about inclusiveness, expanding the context of particular monuments before they are either destroyed, removed or vandalized. History reappropriates these things over and over again over a long period of time. It seems to me part of the importance of a monument is to remember the way that these particular things were remembered at a particular time. The whole issues about racism, or gender, or ethnicity, or all those issues, forgetting that we remembered them in a particular way without expanding them. Those kinds of issues. Could you comment about them, please . Prof. Prescott i cannot really think of any examples in which vandals or other protesters were really complaining about depictions of womenhood. It doesnt seem to be a problem to have grandmother and a sunbonnet. Maybe some people are not interested in giving money, that i am not hearing anybody push a feminist push back. A some people saw this as feminist project, a way to promote women, we need to remember what the women did. Weve got lots of sculptures of men, of lewis and clarke, that kind of thing was going on. Where there has been explicit debate and vandalism has been a few cases that are fairly depiction ofheir racial hierarchy or ethnic hierarchy in places where communities are particularly progressive. So the city of San Francisco has a Pioneer Monument that was put up in 1894. It is 50 feet tall and is a tower of white supremacy, essentially. It has the goddess of war depicting the spirit of california. Then it has an honor roll of white men, sir Francis Drake and other explorers up through mexican and angloamerican political leaders in california. It has depictions of gold miners. Then it has a piece that was a cultural grouping of a spanish missionary, a native man lying at his feet, and a mexican cowboy swinging a lasso over his head in the background. This became controversial in San Francisco in the 1990s. This was a time when people the u. S. Was marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing in the new world. There was political conversation about whether that is something we should be celebrating or not. Are we celebrating conquest here . In the midst of that, native activists took issue with the early sculpture that showed the indian cowering. The Roman Catholic church, the Spanish National government disagreed. They thought it was a depiction of a blessing of christianity to people. That is how the sculptor intended it 100 years earlier. People splashed red paint on that portion of the sculpture. They thought to have it removed, unsuccessfully. What happened instead was the city compromised by putting up an interpretive plaque. Then they argued about the text of that. It explained that the native population of california was devastated by white settlement. The population was decimated. They sort of put up a plaque to cover over the controversy. Fast forward 25 years as the southern population started to challenge confederate monuments. And beginning in 2015, there is renewed attention to the Pioneer Monument in San Francisco. An activist persuaded the Public Arts Commission to remove that portion of the larger monument. It was the early days portion. There was a lawsuit filed to prevent that from happening, it was fought back and forth. The sculpture was vandalized and people were hanging up signs around the neck of the spanish missionary, questioning white colonialism. Eventually the city did remove that and placed it in art storage in an undisclosed location last fall. That is a case where there really has been conversation over time and vandalism has been in place. I dont know of any examples in kansas city of that happening. I know one other depiction of a settler and native person in kalamazoo, michigan, that has been removed. There has been a lot of talk in california about imagery of the mission, period. This is also happening at a time when the founder of the California Mission was canonized in the midst of all of this. Santaeen a renewal cruz just removed a mission bell from their campus. Theres a lot of conversation happening in a few locations. I have not heard anything from kansas city. If anyone knows more, please tell me. My sense here is that the attack and vandalism in independence was more pragmatically a desperate attempt to make some money. They would have made a few hundred dollars on the scrap metal. It cost, i think ballpark is 35,000 to replace the sculpture. That seems to be not so much targeting, oh, we cannot have a depiction of a pioneer mother so much as there is a sculpture nobody is paying attention to, maybe i can make a quick buck. There is a range in responses. Other questions . I am curious what inspired you to research the pioneer mothers . Prof. Prescott i was always fascinated by the oregon trail and watched their migration stories. There was a lot of work done in the 1970s and 1980s about women and families on the oregon trail. Nobody had really followed them to oregon. I went looking at how much did their gender roles and their gender ideals change from those who came over on the trails through their children and into their grandchildren. I got interested in Pioneer Monuments as a way to get at the question of, how are they remembering this later . What did they think they knew about what their lives were really like . There, i got interested in, well, i wonder if the ones in oregon are similar ones. Lets see how similar or different they are. I was really focused on these ones from the 1920s, early 1930s of what i call the pioneer Mother Movement. But once i started looking for them, i would go somewhere and say, i am looking for the sculpture. And i could not find it. But then i would go and do you ask do you know how to get to , the sculpture. Where ild point me to need to go, and it would be something different. It would be a frontier themed thing from the 1970s or 1890s. It was not what i had a my head as a pioneer mother monument. I realized i needed to expand my definition, my timeline to not just think about these pioneer mothers in the 1920s, but what is the context . Where did they come from and what happened to them afterwards . The story is a big part of that. It brought me to that broader history. Do historians consider sacagawea of lewis and clark a pioneer mother . Prof. Prescott good question. Historians probably would not term her a pioneer mother. They would want to include her just because they like to include the slave york and be more culturally inclusive. You can be more inclusive by saying they were not always white men. There is a native woman. There was an africanamerican slave. This was the way to be inclusive. But, the pioneer mother label would not work. Historians would think about her as a native person, as an actor. They would want to think about how much the history term would be. The term would be agency, how much control did she have an her life . Is she making her own decisions . 120 years ago that story was different. Portland oregon has their first pioneer mother monument, put up in 1905 by a group of early feminist. There were suffrage promoters for the most part. In conjunction with the lewis and clark exposition, which was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the lewis and clark expedition. It was following on the heels of worlds fair in st. Louis. Anyways, a group of suffrage supporters in portland raise money to put up a sculpture of sacagawea. But the plaque, the dedication plaque says, to sacagawea and the pioneer mother of oregon. They thought she could do double duty. Ok, we are celebrating lewis and clark because that is the point of the fair. That is the story Everyone Wants to tell. But there is interest in her as a sort of feminist story. She is a leader, she is a strong woman and we could celebrate her for doing that. There is some racial politics going on. White women, white pioneer mothers would not be out leading, that would bring their femininity into question. A native woman, we already know she is not a true woman. So we put up a native woman who had this Important Role to play, then we get a strong woman role, but its ok for her to be not ladylike. Who would expect anything different from a native woman . So they are playing these kinds of games. They see her as serving that kind of dual purpose. I would like to remind everyone that dr. Prescott will be signing books outside the auditorium. Lets give her a round of applause. [applause] prof. Prescott thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Products areistory now available on the online store. Go to cspan store. Org to see what is new for American History tv and check out all of the products. Today on the civil war, a coauthor of targeted tracks talks about the importance of the Cumberland Valley railroad, a Railroad Running from maryland to pennsylvania during the civil war. Here is a preview. On the day after the battle , general mcclellan is out of ammunition. He orders more and they are going to load it up and take it to baltimore, transfer all of it to the northern central. The northern central leaves baltimore and the train of ammunition will arrive in hagerstown in four hours and 31 minutes. I cannot do that today with all of the traffic, but they could back in those days. This train loaded with incredibly explosive ammunition moves at speeds up to 54 miles an hour on tracks that were never designed for cars going more than 40 miles an hour, and the standard working speeds for a train in those days was 20 miles an hour. You are doubling that. It is so bad that the journal boxes and some of these cars get worryinghey start about fire. They have to stop twice, and they have to cool the train off so it will not catch on fire could anybody can guess what a box car full of ammunition would have did. It would not have been pretty. Example of his direction in those days, he does not need the amine nation. Even though they risk their lives and set a new speed record for the fastest route has ever run during the civil war, not a single one of these ammunition rounds is fired during the maryland campaign, at least during that time. It becomes known as the amazing ietam and emission ammunition ride. Learn more about the importance of the railroad today at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on the civil war. Youre watching American History tv. The Student Experience is really valuable to me. It had a huge effect on our lives and helped us grow during our college years. Of thisast winners competition, the experience sparked their interest in documentary production. I am from iowa, and i get to be right in the middle of the caucus season, and i got to meet different candidates, and ive had the experience and the equipment in the knowledge to be able to film some of them because of cspan. We are asking students this year to create a video documentary about what issue you most want president ial candidates to address during the campaign. Include cspan video and reflect differing views. We are awarding 100,000 in total cash prizes. Be passionate about what you are discussing no matter how large or small you think the audience will receive it to be. And know that in the greatest country in history of the earth, your view matters. For more information to help you get started, go to our next on history bookshelf jan the eter explores Historical Context of several american ses used in history in his book tippecanoe and tyler too. Recorded the talk at book culture become store in new york 2008. N i thought i would start by spending five or 10 minutes talking about the book, partly genesis and questions that arose that gave the book a scope than i originally intended. Logan and catch howing phrases up to 1955
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