"There go some more I-talians" Archaeology and the Mythic West

Historical archaeologists of the American West work in a place defined as much by imagination and myth
as by history and geography. The Mythic West is a barren landscape of impressive silences, but history
and historical archaeology shows the silent spaces of myth are filled with real people. Focusing on the
Ludlow archaeology project, this paper discusses the relationship between the archaeology of working
people, the Mythic West, and the living presence of alternative histories.

Mark Walker

Anthropological Studies Center

Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
(707) 664-2381
mark.walker@sonoma.edu

Presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference, St. Louis, MO, 2004
The American West is as much a place of imagination as it is a geographical reality. The
"Romantic West" of sturdy homesteaders, hard-living cowboys, and Savage/noble
Indians (take your pick) remains very much alive. It has little, if any, academic currency,
but it remains a pervasive presence in American national consciousness. There is far
more involved in the imaginary west than entertainment and nostalgia. Like all myths and
histories it is crafted together out of different pieces of experience and reality to create a
useful artifact. It is one of the fundamental elements of the dominant conceptions of
American identity. It is, for example, in the wide open spaces of the West that Americans
are supposed to have become Americans.

The Mythic West and its ideological importance was solidified in the late 19th and early
20th century. As with the real west, to understand the Mythic West, we must look east; to
Philadelphia where we find Owen Wister who, with his novel The Virginian, established
the conventions of the modern Western, and to New York, home of Theodore Roosevelt,
and the artist Fredric Remington. These three men along with historian Frederick
Jackson Turner in Wisconsin, probably did more than anyone else to create and codify
the West as a foundational element in American identity.

The vast empty spaces of the West are paralleled by the vast emptiness of the mythic
West--an emptiness that should be filled with people like wage workers, women, and
immigrants. They are present in the very holes they leave in the narratives of the Mythic
West. This paper focuses on one particular absence, that of workers and labor in the
West. The Mythic West was a product of class tensions and would not exist if not for the
fact that the working classes were very much in the minds of the Mythic West's patrician
Eastern creators.

The absence of class that is such a feature of the Mythic West is a product of the class
tensions of the late 19th and early 20th century. The last quarter of the 19th century, "The
Gilded Age", saw a concentration of wealth and capital that was unthinkable in the earlier
days of the Republic. This period also saw a massive wave of immigration from Asia,
England, Ireland, and southern and Eastern Europe. Most of these immigrants, especially
those from agricultural backgrounds, funneled into low-paying unskilled jobs.

The disparities of wealth and the unstable economy, together with new regimes of work
as industrial production increased and more and more workers entered wage work led to
dramatic increases in labor struggles. From 1881 to 1885 there were an average of 500
strikes per year. In contrast the average for the 1890s was 1300 strikes per year (Licht
1995:173).

So prevalent in the historical West, these immigrants make one appearance in The
Virginian.

"There go some more I-talians."

"They're Chinese," said Trampas.
"That's so," acknowledged the Virginian with a laugh…Without cheap foreigners they
couldn't afford all this hyeh new gradin'." [Wister]

The working class was no longer "American" but immigrant. Class was becoming
racialized. The Mythic West was not an escape to a simpler place and time as might be
supposed, but provided a model for understanding and dealing with class tensions in the
coastal metropoles.

With its simple dichotomies the West provided a framework for comprehending the
changing nature of American capitalism and its consequent tensions, and justifications for
the appropriate actions. Cowboys and Indians, civilization and savagery, Americans and
foreigners--a rich terrain of last stands, circled wagons, threatened homesteads, and harsh
justice. For Fredric Remington the cities were the new frontier where Anglo-Saxons
would rediscover their martial vigor through race warfare. In a letter to Owen Wister,
Remington stated

Jews, Injuns, Chinamen, Italians, Huns--the rubbish of the earth I hate--I've got some
Winchesters and when the massacring begins, I can get my share of 'em, and what's
more I will.…Our race is full of sentiment. We've got the rinsin's, the scourin's, and
the Devil's lavings to come to us and be men--something they haven't been, most of
them, these hundreds of years. (Stevens 2002:10)

The West was where White Americans could strip away the accretions of urban living
and rediscover the Anglo-Saxon core. Wister himself noted that survival in the "clean
cattle country requires spirit of adventure, courage, and self-sufficiency; you will not find
many Poles or Huns or Russian Jews in that district; but the Anglo-Saxon is still forever
homesick for out-of-doors" (Stevens 2002:14). Because Wister was able to ignore the
social relations that created the cowboy--the wage work, the debt peonage, and even that
cowboys rarely owned their own horses--he was able to create the isolated free-roaming
individual so has become such an integral part of dominant conceptions of American
identity.

The Mythic West may have little academic credence but one always feels its heavy hand
on one's shoulder when doing archaeology in the West and presenting findings to the
public. This "heavy hand" can be present in audience expectations, in the questions they
ask, and in the uneasy sense that one is competing with the every hour, on the hour,
outlaw hanging in nearby Canon City.

The Mythic West remains a dominating presence, but other histories also flourish. They
may not have the same resources or appeal but they remain vital and living. More often
than not archaeologists work in the realm of these other histories. We have a hard time
avoiding the Poles, Huns, Jews, Chinese, and the rest of the "Devil's lavings". The West
we work in is one of immigrants, work camps, company towns, railroads, vast extractive
enterprises, Eastern capital, and labor struggles that substantially changed the ways that
millions of Americans lived.
This paper focuses on one such struggle and the memories that surround it--the 1913-14
Colorado Coalfield War and the Ludlow Massacre.

The Southern Colorado coalfield was an important source of coking, steam, and domestic
bituminous coal, and was extensively developed by heavily capitalized industries such as
railroads and steel mills, especially the Colorado Fuel & Iron (CF&I) mills in Pueblo.
CF&I, owned by Rockefeller interests, was one of the largest employers in the region.
The control of the large coal operators, such as CF&I, over the political and economic
life of Las Animas and Huerfano counties, which comprised the southern field, was
nearly total. The miners lived in numerous company-owned towns located in the canyons
where the coal seams were exposed by erosion. They lived in rented company houses,
bought food and supplies at company stores, and alcohol at company saloons. The
entries to the canyons were gated and guarded by deputized mine guards (Beshoar
1957:2; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:23). The workforce itself was largely immigrant
labor from southern and eastern Europe who had been brought in as strikebreakers in
1903. Before the strike the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) counted 24
different languages in the camps. One might think this was not your usual West, but it
was.

On September 1913, after an organizing drive by the UMWA, the miners went on strike.
10,000-12,000 miners and their families were evicted from their housing and poured from
the canyons to about a dozen sites rented by the UMWA in anticipation of the evictions.
The UMWA supplied tents and stoves, and organized the strikers into tent colonies. The
colonies were located at strategic spots covering the entrances to the canyons to intercept
strikebreakers. The largest of these colonies was Ludlow, with about 200 tents and 1200
miners and their families.

After a period of low-level violence, the National Guard was called out to keep order.
For number of reasons, including the financial straits of the state and the class sympathies
of the Guard leadership, the neutrality of the Guard became hopelessly compromised, and
it degenerated into little more than a heavily armed strikebreaking force (Sunsieri 1972).
General Chase, the Guard commander, initiated a regime of unofficial and illegal martial
law, highlights of which included the suspension of habeas corpus, mass jailings of
strikers, a cavalry charge on a demonstration of miners’ wives and children, the torture
and beating of prisoners, and the demolition of a tent colony at Forbes.

The strike climaxed in the Ludlow Massacre, when firing broke out at the Ludlow tent
colony. An estimated 25 people were killed, including three Guardsmen. As the strikers
retreated from the colony, the Guard moved in and burnt it. Four women and 11 children
had taken refuge in a pit excavated beneath the one of the tents. All of them, except two
of the women, died when the tent above them was burned. Both of survivors lost all their
children. This pit has been preserved and is the site of the current monument, erected by
the UMWA in 1918. Other casualties included three strikers, including the colony leader,
Louis Tikas, who were captured by the Guard and summarily executed.
After the massacre, the strikers went to war. For 10 days they attacked and burned mines
and coal camps, fighting a series of battles with the militia and mine guards along the 40
miles from Trinidad to Walsenburg. This ended when Federal troops were sent in to
restore order. The strike dragged on for another seven months, ending in the defeat of the
union. The trials of arrested strikers (408 in total, with 332 indictments for murder)
continued until 1920. All charges were eventually dropped, with most never coming to
trial. The National Guard court-martialled and exonerated 10 officers and 12 enlisted
men for the Ludlow Massacre.

Although it ended in the defeat of the union, the Ludlow Massacre focused national
attention on the conditions in the Colorado coal camps, and in labor conditions
throughout the U.S. (Adams 1966; Gitelman 1988). John D. Rockefeller Jr. was singled
out and excoriated in the press and in a spectacular series of public hearings before the
Commission on Industrial Relations. The strike did lead to some significant changes. It
resulted in a general shift on the part of management from violent confrontation with
organized labor to a policy more of co-optation. It is also generally accepted wisdom that
company town conditions improved throughout the US as a result of the Coal War (Roth
1992; Crawford 1995).

But for all its importance to the labor movement and its practical effects on probably
millions of Americans' lives, Ludlow is little known today. Nationally it did not fit with
dominant conceptions of what American history should be. Locally, it was not
interpreted largely because it was not thought top be the sort of West that people really
want to hear about. The remembered past in southern Colorado needs to be considered in
the context of de-industrialization, the decline of coal-mining, and local attempts to
recreate the area economically--largely through heritage tourism, real estate, and, yes,
private prisons.

Civic leaders in Trinidad, the largest town near Ludlow, are marketing Trinidad as a
historical area, a destination for tourism. Trinidad does boast a remarkably well
preserved late 19th-century downtown. The history that is emphasized here is that of the
Old West; Trinidad’s status as a rest-stop on the Santa Fe Trail where wagon trains would
pause to recoup before heading over the Raton Pass into New Mexico.

Through this history, Trinidad is able to link itself to the national myth of the Old West.
The tourist literature is full of cowboys, pioneers, Indian attacks, and figures such as Kit
Carson, Dick Wootten, "Black Jack Ketchum" and Bat Masterson. The subsequent
histories of coal mining, company towns, and labor struggle are marginalized. There is
some commemoration of coal mining, which, if trends in other deindustrializing regions
are any guide, will probably become more prominent as the industry recedes into the past
(Walker 2003). But at present in much of the tourist and public history interpretation, the
history of Trinidad stops with the growth of coal mining.

Isn't this just giving the public what it wants? No. It is only giving a segment of the
public what it wants. Addressing the Mythic West is not simply a matter of correcting
The Public. All too often we behave as if historical awareness on the part of the public is
simply awareness of and agreement with what we think--a simple matter of formal
education and getting our message across more effectively. But other than a convenient
shorthand for referring to people who aren't archeologists, the term "public" has very
little meaning. The public is diverse. We know this. And the histories that are important
to them are just diverse.

Here I focus on the class basis of the histories surrounding Ludlow. Ludlow, and labor
history in general, is a silence in official history. As of yet few, if any, of the seminal
events of labor history and labor struggle have received official commemoration or
enshrinement (Foote 1997). When important labor history events are commemorated or
their sites marked it is generally by labor and labor unions. This is the case with the
Ludlow Massacre site (Walker 2000). The United Mine Workers of America purchased
the site within two years of the massacre and erected a monument in 1918. They have
held annual memorial services ever since, with a brief hiatus during World War II.
Ludlow is, for the mineworkers, and organized labor in general, very much sacred
ground.

Because of the nature of Ludlow, an important aspect of our archaeological work has
been the relationship with organized labor. One thing that attracted us to Ludlow is that
it is a counter-hegemonic history, but it is also not our counter-hegemonic history. Our
initial appeal for the UMWA and other unions is not what we can tell them about their
history, but what we can tell others. As archaeologists, we bring not only skills and
specialized knowledge in archaeology, but the know-how to gain grants and official
recognition for the site. Also archaeology itself is a highly public activity and attracts
media attention as well as educational opportunities. Members of the project created an
interpretive kiosk for the site, a travelling history trunk for schools, and a travelling
exhibit for union halls and other public venues. Also as part of continuing education for
K-12 teachers, a Teacher's Institute focusing on southern Colorado labor history was run
in conjunction with the fieldwork.

In general I would say the UMWA has been pleased with what we have done at Ludlow.
Beyond the potential for increased awareness of labor history for people outside the labor
movement, the findings themselves have become of interest to union members. People
are struck by what we have found at Ludlow. The image of the broken remnants of the
colony scattered across the plain has become an iconic one. To see these actual
remnants--the burned tent floors, the sad artifacts of everyday life, the bullets and
cartridges, and the in situ burned furnishings lying where they collapsed into cellars on
the day of the massacre is a moving and disturbing experience, particularly for those who
grew up with Ludlow.

The significance of the site extends beyond the UMW to organized labor in general. The
United Steelworkers in Pueblo have been locked out of the Colorado Fuel and Iron (now
Oregon Steel) plant since 1997. The Steelworkers use the monument for meetings,
invoking their struggle as a continuation of the 1914 fight. The CEO of Oregon Steel
blamed the current strike on the culture of the workers, noting in a newspaper interview
that "they're still mad about the Ludlow Massacre…We never thought about that. That
culture is still there" (Strom 2000).

I am going to wrap this up by noting that between May 7th and May 8th of 2003 the
Ludlow Monument was severely vandalized. The culprits have not been caught, and the
missing heads have not been recovered. But on the plus side public and union donations
have already raised enough to fully restore the monument.

An interesting aspect of this is that, outside Colorado, this vandalism was not covered in
the US mainstream press. Independent news web sites reported it and there was a lengthy
article in the Mexican newspaper La Chronica. In the US, nothing. Whether the
vandalism was a blow against the labor movement, fallout from the Steelworker strike, or
simply kids on a lark is not possible to say. Given the tenor of the times and the fact that
unions are under the most sustained legislative attack since the early Reagan years, it may
not matter. It feels anti-union.

In conclusion the mythology of the Old West reverberates through political and social
discourse through to the present--justifying the laws of capitalistic competition, Social
Darwinism, and Manifest Destiny. For example it seems there is no foreign policy
problem so complex and so structural that it cannot be solved by shooting the right
people. The western myth provides us with a ready-made framework of understanding
and interpretation. We do not need to know about Kurds, Arabs, and Persians, Sunni and
Shia, Baathists and nationalists. We only need to know about Cowboys and Indians,
civilization and savagery, good guys and bad guys.

The West of Ludlow, Chinese railroad workers, Wobblies, Apache dam builders, and
other working people deserves commemoration and interpretation. It is humane,
inclusive, and truer. It is also the West that archaeologists find.
References Cited

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on Industrial Relations. Columbia University Press, New York.

Beshoar, Barron B.
1957 Out of the Depths: The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader. Colorado Historical
Commission & Denver Trades & Labor Assembly, Denver.

Crawford, Margaret
1995 Building the Workingman's Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns. Verso, London.

Foote, Kenneth E.
1997 Shadowed Ground: America's Landscape of Violence and Tragedy. University of Texas Press,
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Gitelman, Howard M.
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Licht, Walter
1995 Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

McGovern, George S. , and Leonard F. Guttridge

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Roth, Leland
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Strom, Shelly
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Walker, Mark
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2003 The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado. Historical
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