![]() Rather, as Brands shows, the combined forces of collectivism and federal power helped westward migrants to seek fortune on the other side of the Mississippi, as government and colonist alike engaged in the “spoilage” of the western environment and chased riches while perpetrating “acts of violence against indigenous peoples, foreigners, and one another” (p. As he follows fur traders, missionaries, miners, soldiers, and many others who chased their “dreams of El Dorado” into the North American interior, Brands argues that it was not a mythic “American individualism” that enabled US westward expansion and brought occasional success to some of the western dreamers that appear in Dreams of El Dorado (p. In Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West, H. ![]() How did the vast landscape west of the Mississippi River become “an American West” (p. Reviewed by Jacob Swisher (University of Notre Dame)Ĭommissioned by Daniella McCahey (Texas Tech University) ![]() Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West. ![]()
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