Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross’ Hole, a 1912 painting by Charles M. Russell that hangs at the Montana State Capitol, depicts a fortuitous encounter between Thomas Jefferson’s Corps of Discovery and the Salish Indians in the Sula Basin in the southwestern corner of Montana. The meeting, which occurred in September 1805, was one of enormous strategic importance as it enabled the expedition to secure the horses and directions needed to traverse the Bitterroot Mountains before winter snow would make travel impossible.

This course traces the rise of the “American West” in American consciousness from the early 19th century until today. Understanding that U.S. expansion looks different for the indigenous cultures of the trans-Mississippi West, the course asks students to re-think the “myth of the West” with the reality of western development. To do so, this course introduces four ways to think about the American West: as lines of frontier settlement, as borderlands zones of intercultural mixing and policing, as a distinct region with shared characteristics, and as romanticized imaginaries that become powerful myths.

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