The Annals of Iowa

Review of: Hostile Heartland: Racism, Repression, and Resistance in the Midwest, Brent M.S. Campne

Howard, Ashley

Hostile Heartland: Racism, Repression, and Resistance in the Midwest

Review of: The Frontier Army: Episodes from Dakota and The West, edited by R. Eli Paul

Beck, Paul N.

Book Reviews and Notices      303 
eve of and during the war, which pressured a minority of Iowans to de-
cide to migrate. Abraham Lincoln ascended as a ruthless anti-secession 
president. Republican provost marshals arrested antiwar newspaper 
editors and a former U.S. Senator and Dubuque slave owner, George 
Wallace Jones (Jones’s image is one of the book’s numerous illustrations 
of Iowa Confederates and their networks). And Republican newspapers 
stoked hysteria about secret societies of southern sympathizers. These 
chapters confirm that Iowa likely had little of the “Copperhead” re-
sistance movements that swept southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois un-
til Lincoln’s 1864 re-election. 
After this introduction, the book is organized in six chapters, each 
one comprised of a series of individuals’ profiles reflecting patterns of 
experience. Chapter 3 focuses on wartime Dubuque, the home of a 
dozen Confederates. Chapter 4 identifies fourteen Iowa families whose 
fathers, sons, and brothers fought on different sides during the war. 
Chapter 5 describes three individuals who served the Confederacy out 
of “principled commitment,” including “hints of southern-defined 
honor” (84). The following two chapters examine the odysseys of a half-
dozen Iowans who deserted the Confederate ranks (Chapter 6), and Io-
wans who rendered professional service to the Confederate military as 
physicians, chemists, lawyers, chaplains, and armorers (Chapter 7). 
Chapter 8 highlights fifteen Iowans raised or educated in the South who 
chose to return to the region.  
Of the seventy-six Iowa Confederates that Connon documents, ten 
were killed in the war, a mortality rate about half that of Confederate 
troops’ overall death rate. This discrepancy may reflect the relative social 
affluence of the Iowa Confederates. Overall, Connon reveals patterns in 
these men’s backgrounds that predisposed them to join the rebellion, 
their various forms of wartime service, and their postwar lives spent 
either building careers in the reconstructed South or, if they returned to 
Iowa, seeking to live down reputations as traitors. 
 
 
The Frontier Army: Episodes from Dakota and The West, edited by R. Eli 
Paul. Pierre, SD: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2019. 189 pp. 
Maps, photographs, illustrations, artwork, notes, index. $29.95 hard-
cover. 
Reviewer Paul N. Beck is professor of history at Wisconsin Lutheran Col-
lege. His publications include Columns of Vengeance: Soldiers, Sioux, and the 
Punitive Expeditions, 1863–1864 (2013) and The First Sioux War: The Grattan 
Fight and Blue Water Creek, 1854–1856 (2004). 
304      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
A number of works have studied the frontier army, and the officers and 
enlisted men who served in its ranks. Don Rickey’s Forty Miles a Day on 
Beans and Hay (1963), Robert Utley’s Frontiersmen in Blue (1981) and 
Frontier Regulars (1984) are three of the standard works in the field. More 
recently, Life of a Soldier on the Western Frontier (2008) by Jeremy Agnew 
and Doug McChristian’s Regular Army O! (2017) have added to our un-
derstanding of the army that fought in the Indian Wars. The Frontier 
Army: Episodes from Dakota and the West, edited by R. Eli Paul, presents 
seven chapters dealing with various aspects of military life in the Dako-
tas and the West. The articles include writings by some of the top histo-
rians of the Indian-fighting army of the American West. These authors 
include Paul Hedren, Brian Dippie, R. Eli Paul and Jerome Greene. 
There is no specific unifying theme for the articles except for the 
general one of dealing with the army in the West. The articles are wide 
ranging and consist of various aspects of the frontier military. The time 
period ranges from 1855 to 1890. The book also includes an appendix of 
“Notable Works on the Frontier Army and Indian Wars” by Thomas 
Buecker and John McDermott. 
The first article by R. Eli Paul focuses on an eye-witness account of 
the Battle of Blue Water Creek. Two articles respectively authored by 
Paul Hedren and Douglas McChristian follow on the role of the artillery 
in the Indian Wars. Both provide information on the most neglected 
branch of the military in the Indian Wars. A lighter-hearted essay by 
Lori A. Cox-Paul looks at recreational pursuits of the enlisted men, of-
ficers and their wives. These numerous activities aimed at fighting the 
boredom of frontier life. Two chapters by Brian Dippie and Frank Schu-
bert address art and the frontier army. Schubert, whose article included 
some unnecessary social commentary, considered the creation of statues 
for the Buffalo Soldiers while Dippie follows the career of Frederic Re-
mington and his positive artwork dealing with the army. Finally, Jerome 
Greene’s excellent study of eye-witness Sioux accounts of the massacre 
at Wound Knee completes the book. 
Editor R. Eli Paul states that the purpose of the book is to present 
new sources and authoritative scholarship on a series of familiar topics: 
the history, organization, society, and culture of the frontier army. This 
is accomplished in the articles presented in the book. Several of the ar-
ticles, such as McChristian’s study of the artillery during the Indian 
Wars and Greene’s dealing with Sioux accounts of Wounded Knee, alt-
hough well done, would only have benefited from a more in-depth and 
longer essay on the topics. The appendix of key studies on the frontier 
army and the Indian Wars is an excellent inclusion that will be of inter-
est and use to students of the time period. 
Book Reviews and Notices      305 
Although there is no direct link to Iowa, the articles addressing the 
use of artillery in the Great Sioux War and the Native American view of 
Wounded Knee do occur in the upper Midwest and are welcome addi-
tions to the history of the region. The interaction and warfare between 
white settlers, the military, and the Sioux is an important aspect to the 
settlement of Iowa and the Midwest. This warfare lasted over forty-five 
years, starting with the Spirit Lake Massacre in Iowa and not ending 
until another massacre, this time of the Sioux at Wounded Knee in pre-
sent-day South Dakota. The role of the frontier army in these conflicts 
and a study of the men who served in this army is a needed contribution 
to the history of the region. 
 
 
Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America, by Thomas J. 
Brown. Civil War America Series. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North 
Carolina Press, 2019. 366 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $29.95 paper-
back.  
Reviewer Edith M. Hunter is a graduate student in history at Iowa State 
University. Her research focuses on the destruction of Civil War monu-
ments during WWII scrap metal drives. 
“If the nation is to continue as a whole,” warned former Confederate 
General Fitzhugh Lee in 1869, “it is better to forget and forgive rather 
than perpetuate in granite proofs of its civil wars.” Yet, the United States 
failed to heed Lee’s warning, and now its landscape is dotted with mon-
uments to, memories of, and myths about this internal conflict. The first 
of these persistent myths that Thomas Brown busts in Civil War Monu-
ments and the Militarization of America is the existence of a code that re-
vealed the fate of the rider in an equestrian statue based on the number 
of his horse’s hoofs that were touching the ground. Despite this de-
bunked mythology, Brown argues that public monuments are worthy 
of much deeper and richer study than any simple code can reveal. Me-
morials, then as now, can tell us as much about the subject they seek to 
commemorate as the times in which they were dedicated. 
Brown organizes this work both thematically and chronologically. 
He moves from honoring the dead with simple funerary obelisks, rec-
ognizing ordinary citizens in common soldier statues, and memorializ-
ing public leaders with equestrian statues to celebrating the war and its 
veterans with triumphal arches and allegorical figures of victory. The 
book is richly illustrated with examples from the anonymous creations 
of Gorham Manufacturing and the New England Granite Company to 


English

The Frontier Army: Episodes from Dakota and The West

Review of: Lincoln’s Confidant: The Life of Noah Brooks, by Wayne C. Temple, edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis

Mitchell, Robert B.

Lincoln's Confidant: The Life of Noah Brooks

Review of: The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730–1865, by M. Scott Heerman

Wood, Sharon E.

Book Reviews and Notices      85 
a skilled translator and experienced diplomat, west to seek peace with 
tribes there. 
 Jung concludes with a wide range of questions: who went with Ni-
colet, which route they used, even what year the expedition occurred. 
To answer these queries, Jung examines and usually discounts earlier 
scholarship and shows how it contributed to existing misperceptions of 
the diplomat’s actions. He carefully dissects the myth that shows Nicolet 
awing the Indians in his Chinese silk robe, suggesting that it was a mere 
silk cape that would have been used in France as a mark of his rank. In 
dismissing that image, Jung points to studies of public memory and 
how historical reproductions develop. 
 The scholarship here is wide-ranging and thorough but offers no 
gripping narrative. Instead, Jung offers a detail-laced prose in which he 
admits that “Jean Nicolet’s journey did not make any great impact on 
the larger community of New France” (149). That being the case, one 
wonders how much the study contributes to any new or expanded un-
derstanding of midwestern history.  
  
 
The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois 
Country, 1730–1865, by M. Scott Heerman. America in the Nineteenth 
Century Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 
239 pp. Maps, illustrations, graphs, notes, bibliography, index. $45 hard-
cover. 
Reviewer Sharon E. Wood is professor of history at the University of Ne-
braska, Omaha. The author of The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, 
and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City (2005), she is writing a life history of 
Priscilla Baltimore, a slave who liberated herself and became a leader in the 
free black community of St. Louis and southern Illinois. 
This is a book for anyone interested in the history of the Midwest in the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or the history of slavery in North 
America. Drawing together political, legal, and social histories, Heer-
man traces the practice of human bondage in a place often considered 
a “free” state. Although common wisdom assumes that Illinois, carved 
out of the Northwest Territory, was closed to slavery under U.S. law, 
historians generally understand that the practice of enslavement per-
sisted in the state at least until 1845. Heerman offers a clear and detailed 
history of slavery’s tenacity—and why only the Thirteenth Amendment 
to the U.S. Constitution actually ended slavery in the Land of Lincoln. 
 Heerman builds his argument on a framework of empires: Indige-
nous, French, British, and American. The “alchemy” of his title captures 
the way migrants into the Illinois country successfully maintained 
86      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
bondage by transforming their laborers from one legal category to an-
other, depending on the requirements of the ruling power. 
 Early in the eighteenth century, French fur traders and Jesuits found 
the Mississippi Valley rich in arable land and built an economy based 
on provisioning New Orleans and the sugar colonies. Plantations grew 
and milled vast quantities of wheat flour for bread, which they shipped 
south via convoys on the Mississippi. The demand for workers led the 
French to tap two sources of unfree labor: enslaved people of African 
descent and Indian captives, mostly women, acquired through diplo-
matic engagement with the indigenous empires that surrounded and 
vastly outnumbered them. Although they came into the system via dif-
ferent paths, by the late eighteenth century the two classes of captives 
merged into the category “French Negroes.” 
 When, in 1778, George Rogers Clark invaded and quickly took 
command of the Illinois country, he declared it a district of his home 
state of Virginia. Among his first acts was to issue a slave code. Al- 
though Virginia’s control of Illinois was brief, those years reinvigorated 
the slaving culture of the region, and Virginia’s cession to the United 
States in 1781 included protection of the “possessions and titles” of the 
“French and Canadian inhabitants” (68). 
 The Ordinance of 1787, which organized the Northwest Territory, 
banned slavery from the region, but that proved no hindrance to the 
slaving culture of Illinois. Governor Arthur St. Clair interpreted the law 
to protect title in “French Negroes,” and migrants to Illinois found other 
ways to bring their enslaved laborers along. One form of alchemy in-
volved bringing enslaved people from Kentucky to the salt mines of 
southeast Illinois but returning them across the Ohio just before they 
had served a full year—thus rendering them temporary sojourners, not 
permanent enslaved residents. Another strategy was to compel the en-
slaved to sign contracts for long-term indentures, magically transform-
ing the dross of prohibited slavery into the gold of “voluntary” servitude.  
 Although the first migrants into Illinois in the Early Republic were 
committed to a slaving culture (and repeatedly attempted to reverse the 
antislavery provision of the Ordinance of 1787), by the 1830s and 1840s, 
they were joined by more migrants from New England, who brought a 
suspicion of slavery—and often of free people of color as well. White 
migrants attempted to exclude free blacks by adopting particularly pu-
nitive Black Codes. The first, passed in 1819 after Illinois became a state, 
profoundly circumscribed the citizenship of African Americans and in-
cluded the requirement that black migrants register their freedom pa-
pers at the county courthouse and post a $500 (later $1,000) bond. The 
Black Codes were another means by which the alchemy of slavery op- 
Book Reviews and Notices      87 
erated in Illinois. Under the law, a person of color who migrated to the 
state and failed to post bond was subject to arrest and sale at public 
auction. As late as 1863, when former slaves came into Illinois to fill 
war-related labor shortages, that provision was still enforced. The 
Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Illinois, so free people 
could still be sold into slavery.  
 Heerman is especially good when exploring the ways people of 
color attempted to resist enslavement in Illinois. He considers how they 
learned to use the courts to establish their freedom, an analysis that will 
be especially useful to historians examining slavery in early Iowa. His 
stories are often filled with engaging detail, drawn especially from 
court records. His final chapters trace the “freedom practices” of com-
munities of color, who assisted those fleeing slavery, and the political 
movement organized by African Americans to overturn the Black Codes. 
This is an important contribution, one that will comfortably share a shelf 
with Robert Dykstra’s Bright Radical Star (1993) and John Craig Ham-
mond’s Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (2007). 
 
 
Return to the City of Joseph: Modern Mormonism’s Contest for the Soul of 
Nauvoo, by Scott C. Esplin. Urbana, Springfield, and Chicago: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 2018. xi, 199 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bib-
liography, index. $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback.  
Reviewer Anna Thompson Hajdik is a senior lecturer in the English De-
partment and Film Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–White-
water. She is working on an image-based exploration of Iowa’s identity as 
it relates to the American cultural imagination. 
In Return to the City of Joseph, Scott Esplin thoroughly examines the 
fraught religious history of Nauvoo, Illinois, and how it evolved to be-
come a modern-day “Mormon Mecca” on the banks of the Mississippi 
River. The story of Nauvoo is one that combines historic preservation, 
outsider investment, and the role commemoration plays in the shaping 
of history and, perhaps more significantly, religious heritage. Esplin is 
also interested in exploring the underlying tension between the two 
branches of the Mormon faith—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day 
Saints and the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints (RLDS, recently 
renamed Community of Christ). A central narrative thread of the book 
traces how that tension has both flared up and simmered just beneath 
the surface of the community as a group of wealthy, prominent Latter-
day Saints took an increasing interest in the town during the second half 
of the twentieth century. Esplin draws primarily from archival sources 
and in particular church records to tell this story. He also dives deep 


The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730-1865

Review of: Great River City: How the Mississippi Shaped St. Louis, by Andrew Wank

Mallea, Amahia

Great River City: How the Mississippi Shaped St. Louis

Review of: Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality: Clergy, African Americans, and Women United for Abolitio

Peck, Graham

Owen Lovejoy and the Coalition for Equality: Clergy, African Americans, and Women United for Abolition

Review of: Boone, Black Hawk, and Crockett in 1833: Unsettling the Mythic West, edited by Michael A. Lofaro

Jung, Patrick J.

290      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
Federalists remained influential in the region and that western Jefferso-
nians “repurposed Federalist institutions” (90). Although old Federal-
ists lost political office, their program laid the foundation for the later 
Whig Party and its adherence to the American System of a national 
bank, protective tariffs, and government money for internal improve-
ments. An epilogue looks at Abraham Lincoln as the heir of the Feder-
alist frontier. 
Maulden might do more to acknowledge the limitations of the ac-
tivist government he sees in the Old Northwest. He frequently quotes 
the expansive language of public documents promising free public ed-
ucation. Although he acknowledges that “progress varied” (166), actual 
funding for educational systems in the states of the lower Midwest fell 
very much short of the rhetoric. In describing an arc that reaches from 
the Federalism of Arthur St. Clair to the Whiggery of Abraham Lincoln, 
Maulden misses the role of class. Lincoln may have embraced Federalist 
policies, but the democratic ethos of the Jeffersonians made possible the 
poorly educated, poorly dressed, homespun Lincoln’s rise to political 
power. 
In effect, Maulden makes an observation about the early American 
frontier that many commentators have made about the modern West: 
small government Westerners rely more heavily on government subsi-
dies than do Easterners. Both in the early republic and today, political 
rhetoric and political reality are often at odds. 
 
 
Boone, Black Hawk, and Crockett in 1833: Unsettling the Mythic West, edited 
by Michael A. Lofaro. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 
2019. cv, 478 pp. Illustrations, notes, appendices, index. $60.00 hard-
cover. 
Reviewer Patrick J. Jung is a professor of history and anthropology at the 
Milwaukee School of Engineering in Wisconsin. He is the author of The 
Black Hawk War of 1832 (2007), and “Lonely Sentinel: A Military History of 
Fort Madison, 1808–1813” (Annals of Iowa, 2016). 
A trifecta of biographies appeared in 1833: one each on Daniel Boone, 
the Sauk war leader Black Hawk, and David Crockett. Common to 
these books, according to Michael A. Lofaro, was a shift in Americans’ 
perception of the frontier and the persons—both Native American and 
white—who resided there. Central to this shift was the election of An-
drew Jackson to the presidency in 1828 and the mythos of a new age 
that celebrated the self-made man who rose to prominence despite 
humble origins. Lofaro writes that these works, in presenting men cut 
Book Reviews and Notices      291 
from the same cloth as Jackson, fulfilled “the needs of cultural and dem-
ocratic nationalism” (xl). 
 The original first editions, all published the same year in Cincinnati, 
are reprinted in this volume. Lofaro prefaces these works with a partic-
ularly valuable introductory essay on the evolution of the frontier hero 
in American literature. By 1833, the eastern aristocracy that had domi-
nated the United States for its first half century had given way to the 
common man. A new democratic spirit defined the age, which, accord-
ing to Lofaro, reflected “a consequent desire for democratic heroes” 
(xxv) whose lives reflected those of ordinary Americans.  
 Boone’s biography illustrated this shift, particularly his time as a cap-
tive among the Shawnees for six months. Prior to his captivity, Boone had 
lived the life of a “white Indian” during his long sojourn in Kentucky. 
While earlier biographies cast Boone’s experience among the Shawnees 
as an instance of racial and cultural betrayal, Timothy Flint’s 1833 biog-
raphy had completed the process through which Boone’s captivity be-
came a badge of honor. Boone’s skill as a hunter and backwoodsman 
rivalled that of Native people and earned him the respect of both Indi-
ans and whites.  
 Black Hawk’s autobiography illustrated a similar shift in sentiment. 
While mediated through a white newspaper editor, J.B. Patterson, and 
an interpreter, Antoine LeClair, the final product was the first authentic 
autobiography of a Native American. Rather than the familiar tropes of 
“uncivilized beast” or “noble savage” that had typified earlier depic-
tions of Native people, Black Hawk instead represented himself as a de-
feated but still proud Indian leader. He considered himself equal to his 
white enemies even as he stood vanquished after the 1832 war that bore 
his name.  
 Crockett, like Boone, was the quintessential frontier hunter whose 
rustic lifestyle and folksy manner presented no insurmountable obsta-
cles as he ascended to the halls of the United States Congress to repre-
sent the residents of western Tennessee. 
 Lofaro’s introductory essay stands as this book’s most significant 
scholarly contribution; nevertheless, the three biographical works that 
follow are valuable as well. Of particular note are the extensive explan-
atory notes that provide contextual information about the persons and 
events described in the texts. Lofaro also furnishes definitions of words 
and terms whose meanings have become archaic, and even opaque, 
since 1833. Indeed, his annotations make these reprintings particularly 
valuable to contemporary scholars who seek to gain insights into the 
lives of Boone, Black Hawk, and Crockett. 
292      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 Of these biographical works, students of midwestern history (and 
especially the history of Iowa) will undoubtedly find Black Hawk’s auto-
biography to be the most relevant. Researchers have tended to gravitate 
toward Donald Jackson’s well-edited 1955 version of Black Hawk’s au-
tobiography. Lofaro’s annotations benefit from six decades of scholarly 
research into the life of Black Hawk and the Black Hawk War since the 
publication of the 1955 edition, and, significantly, include Jackson’s earlier 
annotations. Black Hawk died in 1838, five years after his autobiography 
appeared in print. Later editions, particularly Patterson’s 1882 reprint, 
included details about Black Hawk’s last years in Iowa. Lofaro includes 
these texts in addition to the 1833 narrative of Black Hawk’s life. 
 Presenting these books in a single volume fulfills Lofaro’s intent to 
“immerse the present-day reader in the world of the American reader 
of 1833” (xvi). In doing so, Lofaro illustrates the changing notions of 
race, class, and masculinity that characterized Jacksonian America. He 
has grounded these works firmly and judiciously in the rich body of 
secondary literature concerning both the history and literature of the 
era. His careful annotations result in new editions of these biographies 
that will be much appreciated by historical researchers. 
 
 
Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith, by Thomas G. Alex-
ander. Oklahoma Western Biographies Series. Norman, OK: University 
of Oklahoma Press, 2019. xxiv, 392 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, 
index. $29.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Richard D. Ouellette teaches history at Napa Valley College. He 
holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin. 
Since its inaugural volume in 1988, the Oklahoma Western Biographies 
Series has produced concise biographies that illuminate critical facets of 
U.S. western history. For its 31st volume, series editor Richard Etulain 
persuaded Thomas G. Alexander, Redd Professor Emeritus of Western 
American History at BYU, to produce an important new biography of 
Brigham Young. Alexander is eminently qualified for the task, having 
produced highly regarded scholarship on western, Utah, and Mormon 
history alike. 
Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith begins chrono-
logically. Chapters 1–4 cover the period from Young’s birth in 1801 to 
the eve of the Utah War in 1857. We follow Young as a Reformed Meth-
odist craftsman in New York State; as a Mormon convert, missionary, 
and apostle in Ohio, Missouri, and England; as Joseph Smith’s confi-
dant in plural marriage, temple rites, and theocratic politics in Illinois; 


Boone, Black Hawk, and Crockett in 1833: Unsettling the Mythic West

Review of: Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith, by Thomas G. Alexander

Ouellette, Richard D.

292      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 Of these biographical works, students of midwestern history (and 
especially the history of Iowa) will undoubtedly find Black Hawk’s auto-
biography to be the most relevant. Researchers have tended to gravitate 
toward Donald Jackson’s well-edited 1955 version of Black Hawk’s au-
tobiography. Lofaro’s annotations benefit from six decades of scholarly 
research into the life of Black Hawk and the Black Hawk War since the 
publication of the 1955 edition, and, significantly, include Jackson’s earlier 
annotations. Black Hawk died in 1838, five years after his autobiography 
appeared in print. Later editions, particularly Patterson’s 1882 reprint, 
included details about Black Hawk’s last years in Iowa. Lofaro includes 
these texts in addition to the 1833 narrative of Black Hawk’s life. 
 Presenting these books in a single volume fulfills Lofaro’s intent to 
“immerse the present-day reader in the world of the American reader 
of 1833” (xvi). In doing so, Lofaro illustrates the changing notions of 
race, class, and masculinity that characterized Jacksonian America. He 
has grounded these works firmly and judiciously in the rich body of 
secondary literature concerning both the history and literature of the 
era. His careful annotations result in new editions of these biographies 
that will be much appreciated by historical researchers. 
 
 
Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith, by Thomas G. Alex-
ander. Oklahoma Western Biographies Series. Norman, OK: University 
of Oklahoma Press, 2019. xxiv, 392 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, 
index. $29.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Richard D. Ouellette teaches history at Napa Valley College. He 
holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin. 
Since its inaugural volume in 1988, the Oklahoma Western Biographies 
Series has produced concise biographies that illuminate critical facets of 
U.S. western history. For its 31st volume, series editor Richard Etulain 
persuaded Thomas G. Alexander, Redd Professor Emeritus of Western 
American History at BYU, to produce an important new biography of 
Brigham Young. Alexander is eminently qualified for the task, having 
produced highly regarded scholarship on western, Utah, and Mormon 
history alike. 
Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith begins chrono-
logically. Chapters 1–4 cover the period from Young’s birth in 1801 to 
the eve of the Utah War in 1857. We follow Young as a Reformed Meth-
odist craftsman in New York State; as a Mormon convert, missionary, 
and apostle in Ohio, Missouri, and England; as Joseph Smith’s confi-
dant in plural marriage, temple rites, and theocratic politics in Illinois; 
Book Reviews and Notices      293 
as the leader of the Mormon exodus to the Great Salt Lake following 
Smith’s murder; and as a defender of the vulnerable Mormon theocracy 
in the Great Basin. The narrative’s brisk pace slows dramatically at the 
book’s centerpiece, chapters 5–7, wherein Alexander digs deeply into 
the Utah War and the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In chapters 8–9, he 
shifts to a topical approach by examining Young’s theology and polyga-
mous family life. The chronological focus returns in chapters 10–12 for 
the final two decades of Young’s life, covering the Civil War, the transcon-
tinental railroad, Mormon mercantilism, the Black Hawk War, and the re-
vitalization of church quorums and temple work before his 1877 death. 
The book concludes with an analytical summary of Young’s life. 
Alexander’s tone is critical, sympathetic, and fair. While not as crit-
ical as Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre 
at Mountain Meadows (2002), Alexander does not rush through contro-
versies in the manner of Leonard J. Arrington’s Brigham Young: American 
Moses (1985). Alexander addresses controversies head-on, and among 
other noteworthy conclusions he finds that, contrary to anti-Mormon 
caricatures and Young’s own bluster, Young was no despot. He derived 
his powers from persuasion and consent, and Mormons could—and 
did—disregard his counsel. While Young was no pacifist either, Alexan-
der finds that he was a generally pacific individual who had developed 
a deep fear of armies and mobs. Alexander attributes the violent rheto-
ric Young employed during the Mormon Reformation and Utah War to 
Young’s fear of seeing the Mormons brutalized—again—by outsiders 
and their dissident collaborators. Young’s fearsome rhetoric during this 
period fostered a climate of paranoia, zealotry, and aggression that 
made the Mountain Meadows Massacre possible. Ultimately, though, 
Alexander finds that Young did not order the massacre but tried to let 
the emigrants through. As for Young’s larger significance, Alexander 
echoes Howard Lamar’s thesis that Young was the greatest colonizer in 
western history, and he suggests that Young may have saved the 
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the failure that befell 
most Second Great Awakening movements. 
Alexander makes no claims to definitiveness. Oklahoma Western 
Biographies are works of synthesis written primarily for the public. The 
series wears its scholarship lightly, and like other series volumes, Al-
exander’s contains a bibliography of published sources but does not 
provide scholarly citations to archival sources. In addition, the text does 
not devote equal coverage to the various phases of Young’s life. Alex-
ander leans heavily on his (uncited) primary research, most of which 
concerns the Utah period of Young’s life; the forty-six years prior to 
Young’s move to Utah—including the Mormon sojourn in Iowa, which 
294      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
is of particular relevance to The Annals of Iowa—receive comparatively 
less attention. Readers who seek a more comprehensive biography with 
archival citations should consult John G. Turner’s Brigham Young: Pio-
neer Prophet (2012). 
Despite its admitted limitations, Alexander’s is a synthesis of peri-
odically stunning depth and insight. The author’s deep familiarity with 
his subject matter is plainly evident. The book’s secondary title—the Ex-
pansion of the Mormon Faith—may suggest the author focuses narrowly 
on religious matters, but such is not the case. Young made little distinc-
tion between “religious” and “secular” matters, and Alexander follows 
his lead, ranging widely from “secular” topics like environmental land 
use to straightforward “religious” matters such as missions and temples. 
Packed with surprisingly immersive dives on scattered topics, Alexan-
der’s synthesis thereby differs from an older reliable synthesis, Newell 
G. Bringhurst’s Brigham Young and the Expanding American Frontier 
(1986), a slimmer work of greater balance but less depth. 
A seasoned scholar’s reflections on a critical figure in western his-
tory, Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith is a synthesis 
worth reading. 
 
 
The Mormon Handcart Migration: “Tounge nor pen can never tell the sorrow,” 
by Candy Moulton. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. 
xv, 272 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, appendix, index. 
$29.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Chad M. Orton is a Historic Sites Curator with the Church His-
tory Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is 
an expert on the nineteenth-century migration of Latter-day Saints and 
their arrival in Utah. 
A unique and compelling story of overland migration took place be-
tween 1856–60, when nearly 3,000 members of The Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) “gathered to Zion” (Utah) by 
handcart. While numerous articles and books have looked at various 
aspects of this experience, Candy Moulton’s Mormon Handcart Migration 
is the first one-volume history in nearly 60 years. 
The “gathering” largely took place under the direction of church 
leaders, and these handcart pioneers were a small percentage of the 
nearly 70,000 Latter-day Saints who traveled emigrant trails between 
1846 and 1868. Many who “gathered” were only able to make the jour-
ney because of loans from the church-established Perpetual Emigrating 
Fund (PEF). In 1855, the PEF was nearly broke and Brigham Young, 


Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith

Review of: Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power, by Pekka Hämäläinen

Hausmann, Stephen

286      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
geographer Pete Shortridge, Christopher Laigen makes some headway 
in response to Whitney’s work, drawing our attention to the lack of re-
flection on how regional residents understand their region. Laigen, and 
subsequently Mullin, focus on residents’ perceptions of regions that 
challenge the fixed boundaries that are sometimes drawn by “region as 
place” writers.  
There are four chapters that explore new approaches and more con-
temporary evidence to reflect upon region and boundary. Rachel Han-
del’s comparison of late twentieth-century Plains and midwestern 
women’s memoirs highlights some remarkable themes and contrasts in-
cluding the use of landscape, region as emotion, and reinvention both 
to stay and to leave. Handel shares approaches that both connect and 
are at odds across this regional boundary. Debbie A. Hanson’s compar-
ison of post-1970s regional cookbooks in bordering states of the northern 
Plains/Midwest offers a liminal boundary over which these cultural 
productions reach. Jay M. Price’s use of religion to explore the Mid-
west’s southeastern border helps reposition the discussion of dynamic 
boundaries and liminal spaces away from the Plains and opens up some 
new and interesting questions about how boundaries function. Finally, 
Anna Thompson Hajdik’s well-written reflection on cinematic repre-
sentations of “fly over country” provides a timely reflection on the 
Great Recession and the election of Donald J. Trump. These four texts 
work to balance out the sometimes all-too-familiar terrain of Great 
Plains-Midwest regional analysis that often privileges the past.  
 
 
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power, by Pekka Hämä-
läinen. The Lamar Series in Western History. New Haven & London: 
Yale University Press, 2019. ix, 529 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, glos-
sary, index. $35.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer Stephen Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the Uni-
versity of St. Thomas in Minnesota. His book manuscript is an environmental 
history of the Black Hills and examines the implications of settler colonial-
ism for Native people in cities in the twentieth century. 
Lakota America is Pekka Hämäläinen’s spiritual sequel to his award-win-
ning 2009 book, The Comanche Empire. Both projects cover the rise and 
fall of powerful nomadic Indigenous societies on the Great Plains of 
North America, arguing that horse-and-bison social and economic sys-
tems held the keys to Lakota and Comanche power. Lakota America’s 
subtitle—a History of Indigenous Power—is the principle difference be-
tween this and Hämäläinen’s earlier work. Unlike his previous 
Book Reviews and Notices      287 
historical subjects, Lakota power took a different shape and lasted 
longer. “The key to the Lakotas’ success,” Hämäläinen argues, “is that 
they did something slightly different and unexpected with their poten-
tial” (3–4). That something was a system of flexible kinship, which al-
lowed new people to join Lakota political and social networks even 
within the inherently unstable world of seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century Imperial North America. Flexibility and adaptability were the 
critical elements to Lakota power and success during these chaotic cen-
turies. Despite an enduring image in American imaginations as consum-
mate horse warriors, the Lakotas' deft and nimble diplomatic acumen, 
along with their willingness to adapt their society to meet changing cir-
cumstances, was the true heart of their political power.  
 Hämäläinen tracks the rise of the Lakota as a crucial player in the 
clash of French, British, and Spanish empires at the heart of North 
America, as all three vied for the greatest fur yields in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. For Lakotas, the imperial fur economy gradu-
ally took them west from their Yankton, Yanktonai, and Dakota relatives 
in the woodlands of the Great Lakes and onto the tallgrass prairie of the 
Missouri watershed. The Lakotas transitioned to full time nomadism 
over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries using 
the region’s riparian ecosystems and massive herds of bison, along with 
a steady supply of guns. Lakotas were seemingly everywhere during 
this period, from Montreal to the Missouri, thriving as empires rose and 
fell and epidemics nearly destroyed their more sedentary neighbors. It 
would not be until later in the nineteenth century, with bison herds 
dwindling mostly at the hands of white hunters, and facing an Ameri-
can enemy uninterested in kinship, that Lakota power finally waned. 
 Lakota America has much to say to historians of the Great Plains and 
Midwest broadly, as well as to historians of Iowa specifically. Lakota 
territorial control never extended as far as south as the Des Moines or 
Iowa Rivers, and Lakota power on the Missouri was centered farther 
north. However, Lakota influence on Native societies in what would 
become Iowa was nonetheless considerable. Regional semi-sedentary 
farming tribes such as the Arikara, Pawnee, and Otoe grew increasingly 
enmeshed in the Lakota sphere of influence during the eighteenth cen-
tury, both as important trading partners and as victims of regular raiding. 
 Moreover, Hämäläinen takes an innovative methodological ap-
proach through his use of Lakota winter counts—pictographic annual 
reports written on animal hide representing important and memorable 
events from a given year. This is not a new primary source, but Hämä-
läinen reads winter counts carefully and in conjunction with one another. 
He also notes when his sources point to the significance of less well-
288      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
known events. For instance, the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty conference gar-
ners far less discussion than a separate, all-Indigenous, peace conference 
between Lakotas and Crows that same year (220–21). Hämäläinen also 
pays special attention to events that appear in several winter counts, 
such as the shocking murder of Lakota leader Mato Oyuhi at American 
hands in 1854. Using Native sources to guide the historical narrative, 
Lakota America holds true to its goal of “decidedly [telling] a history of the 
Lakotas, written from sources that seek to convey their perspective” (8). 
 Lakota America is an important addition to the fields of North Amer-
ican imperial, Indigenous, and even environmental histories. Yet, like in 
Comanche Empire, Hämäläinen’s use of an imperial lens to compare set-
tler colonial and Indigenous polities as near equivalents is problematic. 
As scholars such as Nick Estes have pointed out, Euro-American settler 
colonial states, with their emphasis on controlling land and racializa-
tion, are fundamentally different from Native societies, even at their 
most violent, expansionist, and exclusionary. Claiming the Western 
Sioux built a “Lakota Empire” as Hämäläinen does throughout Lakota 
America conceals more differences than it reveals similarities. Indeed, 
Hämäläinen comes close to admitting as much himself. “The Lakota 
empire was at its core, an empire of equals,” Hämäläinen argues, yet 
“unlike most empires, they did not rely on force or codified hierarchi-
zation . . . Lakotas’ was an expansive, all-embracing understanding of 
belonging that recognized no color line” (243–44). If Lakotas were able 
to embrace even former enemies as kin and as equals, one wonders if 
“empire” is the proper term for them at all. Using an imperial lens to 
describe Native survival and resistance in the face of Euro-America set-
tler colonialism is inadequate, but in many other ways Lakota America is 
a fine piece of historical writing, of use to virtually any scholar of the 
American past. 
 
 
The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783–1840, by 
Kristopher Maulden. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2019. 
xvii, 261 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00, hard-
cover. 
Nicole Etcheson is the Alexander M. Bracken Professor of History at Ball 
State University in Indiana. She is the author of The Emerging Midwest: Up-
land Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest (1996) and most 
recently A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (2011). 
In 1986, the late Andrew R. L. Cayton’s classic The Frontier Republic: Ide-
ology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780–1825 (1986) traced the tension 


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