Page 15 - 2015_Cabin Days curriculum booklet

These romantic and selective memories of pioneering became by the end of the nineteenth
century the Hoosier gospel. The heroic stories became the canon in local history books and
pamphlets, in monuments, memorials, and patriotic speeches, and especially in the state
centennial celebrations of 1916. At the end of the twentieth century the stories and images
still endure. They tower over us to insist that we look up in awe and respect for the
courage, hard work, and sacrifice of the pioneers.

One example of the Hoosier pioneer gospel will suffice. John F. Haines in his History of
Hamilton County published in 1915 opened his third chapter, on pioneers, in this way:

The pioneers of Hamilton County were a race of brave and hardy men and women who
came to establish homes in the almost impenetrable forest and conquer a wilderness,
known to be infested with Indians, wild beasts and malignant fevers. Probably none of them
dreamed how great would become the commonwealth which they were planting, nor how
valuable within a century would become the land which they cleared and tilled, nor how
wonderful the institutions which they established. How churches, schools and homes, cities
and villages should spring up where once roamed the savage Indian, the timid deer and the
fierce wolf.

This telling of the pioneer story is similar to many others across Indiana. Such stories have
the powerful advantage of being very simple and very clear. They present a comforting,
reassuring history, the kind of history many of us want to hear and want to teach students.
And so our pioneers become good and wonderful and great. They become heroic forebears,
indeed superheroes.

I want to suggest ambiguity, and with it a bit more complexity, a bit more of the actual
human qualities of pioneers. It's not only, as suggested in looking at the Constitution of
1816, that pioneers did not live up to the ideals they set for themselves. They cannot
possibly bear the grand claims later generations have made for them. And these romantic
stories of later generations raise important questions not only about our history but also
about how we view our own lives and our futures as the twentieth century comes to an end.

Let me illustrate that point by suggesting some features not present in the traditional
stories we tell about pioneers.

There developed in Indiana by the late nineteenth century a strong tendency to ignore the
role of government. Many Hoosiers professed to believe that pioneers built their civilization
in the wilderness by the sweat of their brows and the muscle of their backs--on their own.
They didn't need government handouts or government bureaucrats telling them what to do.

Pioneer history is far more ambiguous than that. In fact, government was a huge presence
in Indiana long before Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
Federal, state, and local government provided all manner of services, services not forced on
resisting pioneers but demanded by them. Two examples at the center of the pioneer story
can make the case.

First, it was government, especially federal government, which removed the Indians with
military force, annuity payments, and treaties, so that pioneers could own and farm the
land.