‘Home on the Range’: Rootedness and Identity in the Borderlands of the Nineteenth-Century American West

Abstract

Borderlands are often dynamic and heterogeneous. They are areas in- between—contact zones—and as such speak to issues of cross-cultural interaction, transitions, and change. Home, on the other hand, is a concept and a space usually associated with stability, alignment, and continuity. As a central anchor of human life, home is commonly understood to speak about personal rootedness and an ongoing sense of self. And yet thousands of individuals make—and have historically made—their home amidst the fluidity and hybrid- ity of borderlands. This chapter looks in detail at the daily realities of the men and women who inhabited a particular borderland: the trans-Mississippi West of the mid. to late nineteenth century. Unlike other studies, it does not concentrate on the region’ borders with Canada or Mexico—distinct geographical and political boundaries which created obvious borderlands. Rather, the essay approaches the West itself as a space of ongoing contestation, interaction, and exchange: an area which remained an experienced borderland for pioneer settlers interacting with its vast terrain, shifting meanings, and indigenous population while the area’ official outlines continued to be redrawn.¹ In four sections the essay analyzes the original, unedited diaries kept, the houses constructed, and the artifacts used by homesteaders in present-day Nebraska and .by travelers on the Overland Trails to California, Oregon, and Utah to reveal how nineteenth-century men and women found their place in the West. In its conclusion, the chapter uses the pioneers’ experience and practice to question the supposedly unsettling nature of borderlands and the assumed stability of home and self.