National Cowboy And Western Heritage

One pleasant afternoon, my classmates and I decided to visit the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to begin on our museum assignment in world literature class. According to Houston Museum of Fine Art’s staff, MFAH considers as one of the largest museums in the nation and it contains many variety forms of art with more than several thousand years of unique history. Also, I have never been in a museum in a very long time especially as big as MFAH, and my experience about the museum was unique and pleasant. Although I have observed many great types and forms of art in the museum, there were few that interested me the most.

Given that this “visit” was more like a virtual experience, I was still able to access a couple of my senses, just as if I was at the actual exhibition. Through the use of anecdotes and detailed images, I am able to see all of the personal experiences an individual had while practicing a particular dance and what it meant to them. In this exhibition, there are ten different dances displayed, including the: Yup´ik Yurapiaq and the Quyana (Thank You) Song Dance, Yakama Girl’s Fancy Shawl Dance, Cubeo Óyne Dance, Yoreme Pajko’ora Dance, Mapuche Mütrüm Purun, Tlingit Ku.éex ' Entrance Dance, Lakota Men’s Northern Traditional Dance, Seminole Stomp Dance, Hopi Butterfly Dance, and finally, Quechua Danza de Tijeras (Scissor Dance). All parts of the exhibit were insightful, but the two that sparked my interest the most were the Yup´ik Yurapiaq and the Quyana (Thank You) Song Dance and the Quechua Danza de Tijeras (Scissor Dance).

Most events and places of historical value nowadays holds little value in our lives. We confine ourselves to our interstates and highways, following the long line of motel chains stopping for maybe two minutes to take a picture just to say we were there. We take nothing away from these sites that is of real value. We barely scratch at the surface of information and true meaning of what happened at these historical sites. Rinker Buck explains his own experience with removing himself from this cultural norm

When you think of cowboys you think of a hero, someone who seeks adventure and thrill. But things might not be always as it seems. “A cowboy’s life is not the joyous, adventurous existence shown in the moving pictures”(Bill Haywood). A true definition of a cowboy is a man, who herds and tends cattle, specifically in the western US. We tend to focus on the mythical side of the story and ignore the reality.

Throughout the 1900's one predominant narrative permeated and dominated the curricula of American history, as well as the narrative of the American West, throughout our entire educational system. This can be encapsulated and succinctly summarized by Fredrick Jackson Turner during his Frontier Thesis at the World's Columbian Exposition. Turner elaborated during the World Fair that,  " Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development." (Turner, 1893) Concomitant to this was  the pervasiveness of  the romantic ideal of the American West throughout the United States. For many Americans the westward expansion of the United States was a period of "rugged American ingenuity/individualism" as well as the inexorable stream of American progress, and the expansion of "Western Civilization" against the barren and "barbaric west".

It would be almost impossible to write the history of the Old West without giving credit to the Hispanic people who influenced its customs, culture, towns, and lives. The contributions of Hispanics to the evolution and success of America are woven into almost every portion of the nation 's history. To visualize America untouched by Latinos is to imagine a country without much of its folklore and many of its achievements.

I enjoy all kinds of art. When I was a kid, I went to multiple art exhibits (unfortunately, I do not have much time to do that anymore). On the other hand, I am not good at making art. In addition to enjoying art, I also enjoy history. I watch T.V. shows relating to history as much as I can. I have always excelled in history classes. In this essay, I will compare and contrast Tenochtitlan and the figurehead of Andrew Jackson. These two artifacts are very much unlike each other.

Hey! Do you want to know some super cool stuff about my Native American tribe?The name of my tribe is the Great Plains Cultural Region. The Great Plains Region is located in about the middle of North America. It was founded around the 16th century. The person who found the Great Plains was named Francisco Vázquez de Coronado. The area of the land they lived in was 1,300,000 km2 or 501,933 sq miles.

Brief Summary: This book is geared for nine years old and up. This chapter book includes colored pictures throughout the book. Famous Figures of the American Frontier is a series of clear and concise biographies of best-known frontier men and women and settlers of the West.

Unlike other historical books, this book offers a different angle on viewing the history of the American western frontier—through narratives, testimonies, and primary documents that capture the true voices of the Native Americans. Spanning across the 1860s to the 1890s, Dee Brown tells the plight of the Native Americans after their contact with the American settlers and the United States government. The repetitive stories of the Native American groups during the second half of the nineteenth century— the welcoming of white men, the attempt to assimilate or resist, and eventually the displacement or slaughter of the aboriginals— had been told tendentiously by the very people who drove the Native Americans to the ground.

Until the 1860s the land between the Missouri river and the Rocky mountains was largely uninhabited desert land that we now consider the old west. Though many passed through in search of greater fortune and religious freedom it was only home to few native american groups and fur trappers. Following the Civil War and in conjunction with the California Gold Rush and the expansion of railroads the old west saw in influx of people moving from the eastern states and making home in this barren land, though not without risk. As is often depicted in old movies and books, violence and crime were rampant in the young male dominated towns of the old west. Even though there is exaggeration in media there is no doubt that the Old West was a violent and

    When we arrived at the Oglala Lakota Native American reservation, I sensed an immediate culture shock by being exposed to an almost deserted town with few people, old buildings and small local stores. Everyone knew each other, and it was obvious that the Lakota Native Americans have a great deal of pride in their culture because they love their land

Western, a genre of short stories that are set in the American west, primarily in the late of the 19th century (“Western” 598), and still being told until today by films, televisions, radio, and other art works. The major of moving to the west was because of the Homestead Act, 1862 (“U.S. Statues at Large” 392) which would give lands to people who stayed there for five years. This lead to a huge wave of immigrants moved to the West, and they had to face to many hardships and conflicts such as Indian attacks, tornadoes, blizzards, and illnesses.

In the end, Dances and the comanches go out to kill the white soldiers because the white soldiers killed Dances wolf Two Socks and his wolf Cisco. Dances says, “ I got two, Dances with wolves yelled back. He lifted his chained hands into the air and cried out with these”(303). Dances kills the white soldiers with the chain on his hands and put the chains on the body of the dead sargent.

The Cheyenne Indian tribe lived in the central portion of the High Plains and they were divided into northern and southern groups. Originally an agricultural people, they migrated to the Plains and they became hunters. The name “Cheyenne means “red speakers” or Indians of alien speech” but they called themselves Tsistsistas meaning “people from this group”. The climate in the Plains was cold in the winters and hot in the summers with little rain. The rivers provided resources for the people. They spoke the Algonquian language which is related to the Blackfoot, Arapaho and a number of other groups in eastern North America. Both northern and southern Cheyenne Indians speak distinct dialects but they are mutually understandable.