The land had been cultivated and lived on for millennia when geologist Ferdinand Hayden came upon the astounding Yellowstone "wilderness." It wasn't long before the federal government declared it a national park, to be preserved in perpetuity for the enjoyment of all. Ostensibly. How did Yellowstone go from being an important home, hunting ground, thoroughfare and meeting place to being a park?
Megan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone, Mark David Spence, author of Dispossessing the Wilderness and Alexandra E. Stern, historian of Native peoples and Reconstruction are our guides to this rocky start.
Transcript
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:02] By the mid-19th century, the rumors had been going around for a while in the eastern U.S..
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:00:11] There had been trappers and some scouts who had been in there, and they had been telling stories, but no one believed them because they were always telling stories, you know, that seemed hard to believe in outlandish.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:23] Rumors of a place in the Northwest, in Wyoming, territory that was truly fantastical in description. This place supposedly had exploding geysers, shooting water 100 feet into the air. It had boiling springs. It had bubbling mud pockets. It was both beautiful and dangerous. But who could say if any of these rumors were true?
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:00:51] Really Yellowstone was one of the few unmapped places in the United States in 1870 and 71.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:00] This is Meghan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:01:04] You know, lots of surveys had been out there. Lewis and Clark had kind of moved north of Yellowstone on their return trip and their big survey. But no federal officials had been there or even civil officials on the ground.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:16] This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:18] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:19] And today we are telling the story of how a now unbelievably vast system found its rocky start. This is how America got its first national park, the first federally run place set aside for ostensibly all to enjoy. And that story, Nick, is inextricably tied to reconstruction, to railroad building and to the removal of indigenous people from their lands.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:01:45] Indigenous peoples, of course, have been using Yellowstone for thousands of years as a thoroughfare and a camping site and a hunting ground. But they weren't telling any tales of Yellowstone to any Indian agents up until that point.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:02] Well, sure, because when it's your home, its existence is neither unbelievable nor astonishing. But real quick, what does Megan mean by Indian agent?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:10] Great, good question. So this is a position that was reformed several times over the course of history. Initially, it was a person appointed by the president to prevent conflict between indigenous people and non-Indigenous settlers and to remove indigenous people from lands taken or procured by the U.S. government, among other things. Eventually, it was more about facilitating assimilation into American culture and preventing indigenous people from leaving reservations without permits. By the time the position was eliminated in the federal government, Indian agents were thought by the public to be unscrupulous people. They didn't have a great reputation.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:50] Basically, you're telling me this is a whole other Civics 101 episode?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:52] You've no idea. It's so huge. Anyway, back to this rumored land of the Northwest. As soon as non-Indigenous Easterners learned that the rumors were indeed true, it was Go West, young man.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:03:07] It wasn't until a group of kind of civic boosters in Montana went into the park in two different surveys in '69, and then, most importantly, in 1870. That was really the first time that the American public really knew about Yellowstone and what might be there. And it got Ferdinand Hayden's attention.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:29] Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, noted American geologist and former Civil War Union Army physician.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:03:36] He had heard the stories and had always wanted to go to Yellowstone and had been frustrated in an attempt to go there ten years earlier. But it was really in the spring of 1871 that he started to lobby Congress to go to Yellowstone. And up to that point, most federal officials, you know, congressmen, the executive, really had no idea what was out there or if any of these rumors were true.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:01] I feel like we need to set the scene here for a moment. 1871. So the Civil War has only been over for about six years. And it's the reconstruction period, which is, you know, the government is trying to reintegrate the Confederate states back into the Union while preserving the rights of newly emancipated, formerly enslaved people and navigating the South's, quote, black codes which restricted and exploited black Americans. Everything is extremely vulnerable and tense. And Hayden, this geologist, he's like, yeah, now is the perfect time. Give me some money to go on an adventure.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:04:42] For Hayden, it was part of his ambition to become the most well-known scientific explorer in America, perhaps even the world. He had that kind of grandiose of a of an idea of what his career would entail. And hearing about Yellowstone as a geologist I think was very tempting. He thought he would find a lot of evidence of lots of the debates and arguments going on in the field at the time, which mostly revolved around how old the earth was and how it had evolved as it had. Was it a series of volcanic eruptions? Was it erosion? Was it something else? Entirely cataclysmic events. And he felt like he could find those answers in Yellowstone.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:28] And that was convincing to Congress?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:30] No, not entirely. He made another argument as well. And this is the one that I think really got the federal government to bite, to give him money to the tune of $40,000 and marching orders to go along with it, basically. Hayden focused on what Yellowstone was going to do for the United States.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:05:53] The Department of the Interior, in their instructions to Hayden, you know, said, go find out what is there, mineralogically, you know, hydrologically, topographically. Can it be farmed? Can it be ranched? Can it be mined? How can we bring this place into the United States as a productive landscape?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:14] In other words, we've acquired this territory to the West. There's this vast, unmapped space time to find out how we can start exploiting its resources.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:06:24] I think it's important to know that Yellowstone was a Reconstruction project, and we don't usually think of Reconstruction in that way. Usually we talk about Reconstruction as a political process that was meant to bring the former Confederate states back into the Union politically and culturally, and meant to protect the new rights of black Southerners as citizens and then the men as voters. And when you look at Reconstruction from Yellowstone, I think you realize that that Reconstruction was a national process and that the federal government was, of course, interested in bringing the South back into the union. That was their focus. But they were also interested in bringing the West into the union through, getting to know it scientifically, surveying it, understanding what was there, parceling it out and selling it, providing for white migration and settlement, and dispossessing native peoples of those lands.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:25] And it wasn't just about staking physical control. Republicans in Congress knew that this was an important opportunity to build political power as well. If these Western territories became states and those states had Republican representatives, that would be a huge political boon. Not to mention the fact that it would keep the Democratic Party at bay.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:07:47] They knew that the Democrats of the White South were growing in power, and especially after 1874, with redemption politics. They knew going forward that they were going to need the West.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:03] Alright. But before the Republican Party can get to all the potential political windfalls, this surveyor, Hayden, actually has to get out there and see what's what.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:12] Right. So Hayden, the geologist, selects his team and he heads west.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:08:18] They took the Transcontinental Railroad from Omaha to Ogden, Utah. And by the time they left to move northward with a series of wagons, the team was about 50 people, which was a large, interesting mix. You know, it was scientists, cooks, laborers, assistants, who many of whom were the sons of congressmen.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:42] Also vitally important: Hayden brings along artists, a photographer who will be there to document that this place actually exists, that these natural wonders are real, so the people in the East can believe it and do something about it, and to really capture that sweeping, compelling glory of it all. They had a painter.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:02] Really?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:03] Oh, yeah.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:04] That's wonderful.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:09:05] Thomas Moran was sent by Jay Cooke, an investment banker who was very interested in the Hayden survey because he was the the lead financial driver of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which he hoped would lay track north of Yellowstone and bring tourists there. And he knew Thomas Moran from Philadelphia, who already had a fairly good reputation as a landscape painter. And so he helped pay his way and sent him out to join Hayden in July. And Hayden welcomed him because he knew how important visual images would be in helping people to understand what actually was contained in Yellowstone and to really create it in the American mind.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:44] I was just wondering if the business sector was going to come into this at some point. I mean, giant swaths of land without much development seemed like they'd be candy to private industry.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:55] Absolutely. The northern Pacific would eventually have a little spur rail that went directly to. The northern entrance of the park for easy tourist access. Also, Jay Cooke, the guy who owns the Northern Pacific Railroad, he was an avid hunter and he was in support of preserving places for people like him to hunt.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:15] Alright. And speaking of what this land is going to be used for. Was anybody talking about the fact that there were already people utilizing this land? Did Haden actually believe he was going into untouched territory?
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:10:30] He does have those moments, especially in his public writing, where, you know, he's saying we are the first Americans to see this. Oh, and by the way, we followed a trail. He -- he says, you know, we turned our horses onto the trail. So obviously, indigenous people knew this place. They had been there often and often enough that they had actually their horses hooves and the and the travois that they used had dug these trails out. But he does not acknowledge really any indigenous presence or indigenous use of Yellowstone.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:06] When Megan says acknowledge she means in Hayden's writing about Yellowstone because he was perfectly aware of the fact that the expedition might indeed encounter people from any number of the many tribes who passed in and out of Yellowstone each season, even though this expedition did avoid conflict with tribes. It traveled with a cavalry escort, partially for that reason.
Mark David Spence: [00:11:34] The notion of Yellowstone is a wonderland is created by some of these early, early folks.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:39] This is Mark David Spence, author of Dispossessing the Wilderness Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks.
Mark David Spence: [00:11:47] And then you get Thomas Moran doing the paintings, and that's when Congress blows its mind and goes, Oh, my God, when you have the paintings of Thomas Moran, lakes, trees, crags, just atmospheric weather, the way the clouds move in and move out, all that sort of stuff is all part of the sublime esthetic which educated people in the Americas would have learned from Europeans.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:11] Nick, have you seen these Moran paintings?
Nick Capodice: [00:12:13] I don't think so. Are these the ones that sort of look like giant Ansel Adams photographs, like beautiful depictions of Yellowstone and Yosemite?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:21] Yeah, they sort of look like heaven. Like if someone were to imagine heaven and paint it, they make Yellowstone look otherworldly, like, sort of divine and definitely not like the kind of place that human society had touched. These paintings would end up being highly influential to Congress, by the way, because, like Mark said, the sublime was an established concept for many Americans and a coveted aesthetic. To possess something sublime actually meant something.
Mark David Spence: [00:12:51] Yosemite and Yellowstone have all of those elements in spades, an eruption of the sacred into the world. And so these sort of landscapes are just there. They're not standard, they're not normal, they're just extraordinary. And to be among them and within them is to have a sanctifying experience, a saintly experience, in a way that's sort of what underlies the creation of a lot of the original early national parks.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:20] You know, I think this idea is still very much in the air today that many of our national parks represent the astounding, precious wilderness that we smartly had the wherewithal to protect.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:32] Which, by the way, is true, and the eventual decision to protect giant swaths of land in North America from the onslaught of industry and development that swallowed the rest of the country, you know, that's on its face. Great. But the idea that what is protected is this static, pure, quote unquote, wilderness erases millennia of human history. And in actual fact, preservation is defined as the actor process of applying measures necessary to sustain the existing form, integrity and materials of an historic property. But the existing form that Hayden and his expedition, for example, encountered was the result of millennia of human influence humans who had been or were about to be kicked off of that land.
Mark David Spence: [00:14:24] It's a place for humans or visitors not to remain if we're going to a national park to experience wilderness. But by definition, you can't remain. You have to leave.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:31] But of course, this land is not this separate, inhuman block of space, because the word wilderness itself implies that no one has been to or seen this place before or told stories about it. And of course, that isn't true.
Mark David Spence: [00:14:49] It's embedded with stories. It produces the material for stories. If wilderness is real, indigenous people had nothing in their brains for uncountable generations. It's not a wilderness. It's a story that's lived. It's a hell of a lot older than 1776.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:05] So how did this storied place become Yellowstone National Park and what happened to the tribes who were using it before the government began the project of forbidding their way of life? We'll get to that after the break.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:19] But first, if you're a Civics 101 listener, we think you might enjoy our newsletter. It's called Extra Credit. It's fun. It comes out every two weeks. It's full of all the stuff that Hannah and I can't squeeze into our episodes. You can subscribe at our website, civics101podcast.org.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:36] This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:38] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:39] And today we are exploring the creation of America's First National Park, a creation that required a myth.
Alexandra E. Stern: [00:15:47] You know, people are very interested in in preserved land in this kind of outdoor recreation. But it's all kind of premised on this idea of an American wilderness and also this kind of pristine, sometimes called virgin land. Now, that kind of idea is an entire myth.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:08] This is Alexandra E. Stern, a history professor at the City College of New York.
Alexandra E. Stern: [00:16:13] The land that even the first British colonists in 1607 at Jamestown see is actually the product of thousands of years of human intervention. Right. Indigenous people here, at least 15,000 years, they have been shaping and living with and affecting the environment that entire time. So there is no virgin land and there is no pristine wilderness untouched by human beings such that. I think that idea. Right. It shows you kind of who counts in the view of 19th century Americans that they don't think of indigenous people necessarily as people or people who would kind of, you know, rank in affecting wilderness the same way. And that's in part because of their cultural blindness, right, to how what the indigenous relationship with land is compared to, let's say, a Euro-American relationship. There already is kind of this idea that we will want to save the best places, and Yellowstone in particular, which is the first park.
Nick Capodice: [00:17:17] And I know this is an important part of the pitch, right. This surveyor who we talked about, Vernon Hayden, he's been to Yellowstone. He's gathered information about the land, what he and his team saw, photographs and paintings. And he has to come back to the east and report it out and tell the American people, hey, we've got this pristine, untouched wilderness. You're going to love it.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:17:41] In his popular piece for Scribner's Monthly he was articulating a lot of these sublime notions that here are landscapes we've never seen before. They are unique. They are American.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:53] This is Megan Kate Nelson again.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:17:55] And at the end of that essay, he suggested that Yellowstone become a national park, that we keep it to enjoy for the benefit of the people. And underlying that whole notion was not only that that nature would be a wonderful place for people to to go to, to recreate, to kind of walk around and be out in the open air and enjoy that, but also in that second meaning of the word to recreate themselves. So this was a notion that was in the air.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:28] I just want to be clear. Hayden did not actually come up with this idea. A rep from the Northern Pacific Railroad put the bug in his ear by essentially saying, you know, wouldn't it be cool if Yellowstone was preserved in perpetuity by the federal government? And Hayden was like, Oh, yeah, that would be cool.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:48] Why does the Northern Pacific Railroad keep getting brought up here? Why are they, like, sticking their noses into park business?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:54] Well, they're seeing that there is this grand natural wonder right in the proposed path of the railway. They're building the kind of wonder that people, maybe even quite wealthy people, might make a destination out of. And Jay Cook, the mogul who owns the Northern Pacific, has enough money and influence to drum up public interest.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:17] So, in other words, tourism.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:19] Oh, yeah.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:20] So how does Yellowstone finally end up becoming Yellowstone?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:25] Well, Hayden and Cook both start lobbying in Washington.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:19:28] These arguments were pretty convincing that Yellowstone was this amazing natural wonder that its geothermal regions in particular were unique in all the world and should be saved from development. That Hayden was very specific and including in these reports that he helped the public lands committees to write that kind of these twin arguments, that there were already entrepreneurs there hoping to build hotels and spas, and that this was going to be an eyesore. Right. That this was going to be terrible and nobody wanted this kind of development in Yellowstone.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:07] And then do you remember how Hayden convinced the government to give him money to go in the first place?
Nick Capodice: [00:20:13] Yeah. Like to figure out what Yellowstone can do for them, how to make money for America through mining or farming and stuff like that.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:20:20] The other argument was that Yellowstone was useless. So in his reports and also kind of in response to those Department of Interior instructions, Hayden said, Look, you can't use this to farm. You can't farm on top of a caldera. That's not going to work. And there's no the water sources are kind of compromised. Right. Because they have this superheated, very mineral water in them. So you can't farm there. You can't graze there. He determined there was no gold or silver or copper to be mined there. And this often comes up in a lot of preservation history that people argue, well, this land can't be used for anything else.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:04] The way he saw it, Yellowstone had proven to be a place that would not be a great resource for farmers or miners. The United States is unlikely to be able to exploit it in that way. But it is sublime, it is beautiful, and the preservation of beautiful places for public enjoyment. That was already a pretty well accepted concept in America, something we borrowed from England at this point. You already had a fairly famous designer of outdoor spaces, Frederick Law Olmstead building parks in New York City.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:21:37] So those were the two arguments and those were very convincing to the vast majority of Republicans who, you know, it's important to note at this time that Republicans and Democrats had sort of opposite ideologies as they do today. So Republicans were very interested in creating a national infrastructure, in providing all kinds of services for the people and protecting the American people's rights and using the federal government power to do so. And so this was convincing to most of them.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:05] Okay. But this is the Reconstruction period. The United States is recovering from civil war. Who in Congress is going to agree to budget for the preservation of a giant park?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:17] Well, the thing is, they didn't the Yellowstone Act did not come with appropriations, aka money to operate. The act was proposed in December of 1871 and became law in March of 1872. It was not a hard sell in Congress.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:33] In ten weeks. That's quick. How did Americans respond?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:36] Well, many people, including members of Congress who Hayden thoughtfully supplied with copies, had read that essay in Scribner's Monthly, in which Hayden sang the praises of Yellowstone.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:22:45] He never explicitly argued that Yellowstone was the most American place that you could find on the continent. But many people around him were, and many newspaper editors, in the wake of the passage of the Yellowstone Act, were arguing that it really was only in America that the creation of a national park could happen, that this was going to be a democratic landscape of tourism access for all the people. Of course, in that notion, white Americans are completely ignoring the indigenous peoples who had been stewards of that land for thousands of years, many of whom were already forced onto reservations by the federal government and then the Lakota peoples, whose defense of their lands east of Yellowstone would become a central concern for the federal government in in the next couple of years.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:39] Now, I just want to note that there have been several Indian appropriations acts over the course of American history, but the reservation system was established by the 1851 Act. The history of treaties made and broken, of reservations of forced movement, forced assimilation and extermination efforts. That is a whole series here at Civics 101. For this episode, it is just important that, you know that the US government had already forcibly limited native movement at this point.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:15] Okay, but I have to ask, because we know there were multiple tribes who use that land for various purposes, including as a home. Did the Yellowstone Act break any treaties which frankly the US was not at all that shy about doing.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:24:29] Because Yellowstone was a thoroughfare for multiple indigenous communities. During this period, no one tribal nation claimed it as their own, which actually worked to the federal government's benefit later because they did not have to negotiate with any indigenous tribes in order to take that land from them. There were Shoshone and Shoshone Bannock peoples and Crow peoples who are already on reservations around the periphery of Yellowstone. But none of Yellowstone proper had been negotiated at all.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:05] And like you said, many of these native people had already been relegated to reservations. The idea behind that being, as far as I understand it, to both keep native peoples off land the U.S. wanted to use and to control those tribes down to their cultural practices and where they were allowed to go.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:25:26] That was the goal was to to basically annihilate them culturally, you know, take away their language, any of their religious traditions. Their foodways and bring them into the American body politic. Although the 14th Amendment, which is passed during reconstruction, explicitly gives the rights of citizenships to anyone born or naturalized in the United States except Indians untaxed, which is the term that they used, which meant any native people living off the reservation. People like Sitting Bull and his Papa Lakota, who are out, you know, they called them sometimes fugitive Indians or, you know, sort of Indians on the move. They were not contained and not surveilled, and therefore they were not citizens and were not able to claim any kind of citizenship. Right. From the federal government. And and, in fact, native peoples would not earn fully full citizenship rights until the 20th century.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:28] Alright. Let's pause here for a second and talk about the Lakota. Megan mentioned that they were defending their lands even after the establishment of Yellowstone.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:36] Yes. Now, this is where Sitting Bull comes in. He was a Lakota leader who led his people in the resistance against US incursion. And this part of the story is really important, because though the United States tried their damnedest, there was resistance, often successful resistance to this forceful westward expansion into indigenous land.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:27:00] He was a leader of the Lakota, one of several bands of the Lakota people who are themselves a part of a much larger group of seven council fires of what the Americans called the Sioux at that point. And what they they called themselves the Chaco in. And so he was always among a council of leaders, and they made decisions together about how they were going to move forward. But he became a very strong voice for resistance to the federal government in this period, and especially after 1868, which was the big year of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, when a lot of tribal nations in this region, in the Northwest were making agreements with the federal government and moving to reservations. And Sitting Bull was very consistent about his resistance to that. He wanted to remain in his homelands. He wanted to be able to hunt bison herds for his people, for their survival. And he was constantly fighting for that. And it was really interesting in this moment, in 1871, 72, he begins to react to the presence of Northern Pacific surveyors who are trying to build their track right through the heart of Lakota Country from the Missouri River, all the way to the Yellowstone Basin.
Nick Capodice: [00:28:22] The Northern Pacific staking its claim once again.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:25] And Sitting Bull wouldn't have it.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:28:28] Always he was consistent in his message. Always his emissaries were consistent in their message, which was, you know, we want to be at peace. We don't want to fight with you, but you are in our lands. And if you want peace, you're going to have to keep your white settlers out of our homelands and you're going to have to keep the northern Pacific out. And the Indian agents themselves were also very consistent in saying that's not going to happen.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:56] And, of course, it did not happen. Now, even if you don't know Sitting Bull, there is a chance you have heard of the Battle of Greasy Grass, aka Nick, the Battle of Little Bighorn, a.k.a. Custer's Last Stand. This was a watershed moment in indigenous US relations, where a coalition of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Warriors defeated U.S. forces in 1876.
Megan Kate Nelson: [00:29:21] That victory that the Lakota and their allies had at Little Bighorn was astonishing, and it was by far their most kind of impressive victory. But it was also a terrible moment. And Sitting Bull knew this, that even though they had gained the field on this day and successfully defended their homeland, it was going to bring the full power of the federal government down on their heads. And it, in fact, did. And Sitting Bull made the decision to move his Band of Papa Lakota up to Canada.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:54] So why is this important? Why did the battle of greasy grass come into this? How is this about Yellowstone National Park? Because that railroad marketed itself as having the Yellowstone National Park and dining car route to the Pacific Coast. You can buy a vintage map advertisement at Walmart today if you want, because Yellowstone and the railroad and native removal are all the same story. Here's Mark David Spence again.
Mark David Spence: [00:30:24] There's no reason to assume or even argue incessantly that native removal doesn't also touch the things that we consider the best and most noble aspect. Operations or inherited virtues. And I would say it's dangerous to forget that we may not fix it or cure it, but it's a very dangerous to forget that native removal, the admiration for national parks. They're just inseparable. They're definitive of what we are as a nation. National development and Indian policy go hand in hand.
Nick Capodice: [00:31:00] So, Hannah, over the course of this whole episode, I keep coming back to this pretty famous Wallace Stegner quote, which made its way into the Ken Burns documentary about the national parks. Stegner, by the way, was a novelist, environmentalist and historian of the American West, and he said national parks are the best idea we ever had.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:20] Yes, Stegner, who notably minimized and erased the indigenous past and present from the American West.
Nick Capodice: [00:31:26] Right and to that point, having listened to you spin this history out to me. I have to ask Hannah, are they our national parks? The best idea we've ever had?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:37] Here's Mark's take.
Mark David Spence: [00:31:39] I would say that national parks can manifest the very best of the best virtues that we like to celebrate and acknowledge in the United States. But it's sort of a two pronged search for understanding and not just understanding, but how do I live with sort of the the anomaly of this virtue and lack of virtue?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:32:02] It's hard to deny the remarkable fact of these spectacular places. Protected places, places set aside for all to enjoy. Places that today are operated in a very different way than they were in the past. But that does not mean that the history of these places can go unexamined. In fact, I'd say allowing the parks to manifest the best virtues of the United States very much includes that history very much includes an examination of that history.
Mark David Spence: [00:32:36] People have to be inside of history. I mean, it's something we really need to know. We really need to know that we're walking on 20,000 year old graves, sometimes in certain areas.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:32:45] And for Mark, it isn't just the history. It's how these lands are being protected today and who gets to protect the lands.
Mark David Spence: [00:32:53] Indigenous peoples are related to these places. They are relationships with with animals. There's relationships with non animate beings. They have this binding relationship that's gone back since the first story was told.
Nick Capodice: [00:33:06] In other words, what better conservators than the people who know and are deeply embedded in this land?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:13] Alexandra E. Stern, who we heard from earlier, has a really good way of bringing this all together, I think.
Alexandra E. Stern: [00:33:19] I think that's that idea. I mean, maybe not in such a 19th century way, but that's still really, I think, undergirds the the kind of park ethos a little bit, this preservationist tendency to something of the past. And in that way, I think it erases right the ways in which we affect the land all the time. I mean, I'm thinking now, having recently actually been in Yellowstone, I mean, the number of people there is tremendous. I mean, it is full. Right. And you I mean, I think people think they're getting right, this kind of, you know, experience out of time. But I guess maybe for me as a historian, you know, it's like my experience is really actually affected by how many you know, there are a lot of people here and we're all shaping it, you know, in our ways. You know, the lovely roads we have to drive about the park, right. That's you know, that's shaping things, too. I mean, the Park Service, I mean, really is thoughtful. It really tries to be thoughtful about these things. But at the same time, there has to be access as well as right preservation.
Nick Capodice: [00:34:27] So to engage with the history of the parks also means engaging with how these lands themselves have been affected by that history.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:34:35] Which initially was purposefully not done right. Remove the indigenous people from this land and with it, erase the fact that they were stewards of this land at all. And when you do that, you find that the land changes pretty dramatically because there are no longer people cultivating it the way they had for thousands of years. And then it's like, Oh, shoot, how did that become overgrown? And how do we bring the quote unquote wilderness back to the way we found it?
Alexandra E. Stern: [00:35:03] I mean, yes, I think the erasure is intentional, although I will say the Park Service has really made an effort. So many of the treaties that were signed, that acquired parks, land that went to the federal government included rules about how indigenous peoples would still have access to that land, especially with gathering practices and also as a hunting ground. Right. Because that's in fact, that's what Yellowstone had been. Right. It had been sort of a shared tribal space of resources that no one one group had settled. And the parks has really tried, I think, especially in recent decades, to allow this kind of access to facilitate relationships with local groups. Because actually, if you look at any map of park land, it's almost always very close to indigenous reservations. Right. And that's because of that history that indigenous people had had always been there and been using that space. So I think there is a movement to try and make Indigenous people much more central to the park's story, which is, I think, really critical also to understand, right, conservation and how people interact with the land and how they shape it and what that means and what are good practices to use in land management. I think we can get far by thinking capriciously about who might have something to say about that.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:30] So here's the deal with Yellowstone. A few years after it was established as a national park, control of Congress flipped to the Democrats. Now, they were not particularly invested in crafting public spaces, providing public services, etc., etc.. And what that meant was no more national parks until 1890, when Republicans gained control again. And Yellowstone is just sitting out there and eventually the government sends in military to patrol it, to keep people and development out. That is most development with the exception of the Northern Pacific's railroad at Mammoth Hot Springs. But the National Park Service, with its park rangers and notions of stewardship and education, that isn't even established until 1918.
Nick Capodice: [00:37:14] Wow. So Yellowstone is actually an anomaly. It didn't kick start this mad rush to create a park system. And also, Hannah, just out of curiosity, this is the only person I was expecting to hear about. When exactly does Teddy Roosevelt come into play?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:37:29] Fair question. The national park system that we know today looks at preserved lands and their history in a very different way than the government did when Yellowstone was created. And right now, in 2022, some indigenous leaders see a potential to heal the wounds of the past, especially with the new National Parks director, Chuck Sams. He's the first tribal citizen to lead the parks system. So, you know, Nick, now that we know the history that the park's toes in its wake and yes, that includes a lot more. And Teddy Roosevelt, I think it may be time to get to know the national park system. I'll get started on.
Nick Capodice: [00:38:08] That and I'd appreciate it, Hannah, just not this second.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:11] No, I think we have given the people enough to think about for today.
Nick Capodice: [00:38:32] That does it for this episode, which was produced by Hannah McCarthy with help from me, Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:43] Music In this episode by cast Silver Maple, Arthur Benson, Alexandra Woodward and Rocky Marciano.
Nick Capodice: [00:38:50] You can find this episode and many, many more at our website, civics101podcast.org. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or pretty much anywhere you can find other podcasts. NPR One. Stitcher. Grapesnout.
Nick Capodice: [00:39:03] You know Grapesnout, all the kids listen to it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:06] Alright.
Nick Capodice: [00:39:08] And if you like us, give us a rating and a review. It helps our hearts quite a bit.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:12] Civics 101 is a production of HBR. New Hampshire Public Radio.
Nick Capodice: [00:39:15] Alright.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:17] Oh, you're jacking us up to 50 there, huh?
Nick Capodice: [00:39:19] I put myself up a little bit because apparently I'm a little more quiet than you. Because yours is like this.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:23] Like, yeah,
Nick Capodice: [00:39:24] Shrill.
Nick Capodice: [00:39:27] High pitched whine.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:28] Unlistenable. Basically, it's the teacher in Charlie Brown but worse.
Nick Capodice: [00:39:32] That is really horrible.
