HSTAA 432

History of Washington and the Pacific Northwest

Introduction

Preface

Welcome to HSTAA 432, History of Washington and the Pacific Northwest. This course introduces you to more than two centuries of historical development in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, with some coverage of British Columbia, California, Montana, and Alaska as well. This course is based on HSTAA 432, History of Washington State and the Pacific Northwest, which I offer on campus at the University of Washington, Seattle. It is an upper-division, undergraduate course on local and regional history. There are no prerequisites for taking the class, and every student is welcome. However, as an upper-division course HSTAA 432 is rather demanding. You are expected to complete a considerable amount of reading, to write essays both short and long, and to undertake a research project. By the end of the course, I expect you to have learned a substantial amount of new information about the history of Washington and the Pacific Northwest; improved your ability to think and write historically; improved your ability to read critically; and improved your ability to think and write conceptually. These goals, and the methods for meeting them, are discussed more fully in the following pages.

I have tried to detail my expectations and suggestions for you below. Before you begin course work, please read through the introductory pages in order to get a sense of what HSTAA 432 entails. However, it may be difficult to figure out exactly what you are being asked to do before any actual reading or writing has been done. So, please take time later in the course to revisit this introductory material and refresh your understanding of our goals and expectations. Your progress through the course will be supervised by either myself or another instructor familiar with Pacific Northwest history. (Refer to the instructor information sheet you received with your course material to find out who your instructor is and how to contact her/him.) When we communicate with you (e.g., answering your questions by e-mail or commenting on your papers) we will try to reiterate the overall goals and expectations of the course.

About the Online Environment

Your online course offers several advantages to the traditional classroom, including the comprehensive Online Student Handbook, the ability to communicate electronically with students and with your instructor, and links to a rich array of online resources.

Online Student Handbook

This handbook answers questions about your online learning course, such as how to purchase your text, schedule an exam, obtain a transcript, and get technical help if you need it. The handbook also provides additional resources, such as how to order books or journals from the library and how to study for an online course.

Communications with Your Instructor and Student Peers

• Online Discussion Forums, designed by the University of Washington award winning Catalyst team, allow you to communicate with other currently enrolled students and with your instructor.
• You can use e-mail to ask your instructor a question.

Online Resources

As an online student, you have access to a wealth of Web resources compiled to provide fast, easy access to information that supports your online learning experience. Organized by subjects, Online Resources link you to sites with help for writing and research, study skills, language learning, and library reference materials. All links have been assessed for credibility and reliability, and they are regularly monitored to ensure their usability.

Course Objectives

One major goal of the course is for you to become familiar with the course content as presented in the different venues and be able to write effectively about it in a mixture of assignments. This entails learning a variety of facts about and perspectives on the history of Washington and Pacific Northwest—one kind of thinking. Some memorization is involved, as is close and careful reading. It is also important to link past events and trends with present–day conditions. You are expected to be able to identify the major trends and phases in regional history, and to understand how the history of the Northwest fits in with the history of the broader North American West and the United States. We try not to look at state and region in isolation.

Another goal is to improve your ability to think historically—about the Northwest after 1750 or so as well as about other places and times. Historical thinking entails the recognition of complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty in human affairs; the development of a critical—and often skeptical—attitude toward sources of information; and the understanding that events occur sequentially and that the sequence matters. Historical thinking also requires that one try to understand past events and trends from the different points of view that people living at the time had, and to recognize that those points of view from the past are generally substantially different from our own today.

To encourage better historical thinking, this course relies on a good deal of reading of primary sources, i.e., documents created by people who were eyewitnesses to the events and developments of past times. You are required to read and think critically about these primary sources, to try to appreciate where their authors "were coming from" and why they arrived at the impressions or conclusions that they expressed. To help you think critically about primary sources, I have included a list of suggestions to keep in mind while reading them. These suggestions are located in appendix A. On at least one occasion, you must write a short paper about the primary–source documents you have read.

You are also asked to read and think about secondary materials, i.e., the writings of several historians who have themselves used primary sources to construct arguments about the past. To help you think critically about secondary materials, I have included a list of suggestions to keep in mind while reading them. These are included in appendix B. On at least one occasion, you will be asked to write a short paper about the secondary works you have read.

Finally, the course requires that you conduct your own research project, based at least in part on the reading of primary sources, to demonstrate your ability to read sources critically and to think and write historically. You will get more information about the research project, and you are encouraged to consult with the instructor about it.

Another goal in HSTAA 432 is to help you to develop the ability to think conceptually. Coming to terms with the past requires that one impose some intellectual order on the numerous, diverse, sometimes chaotic set of facts from previous times, to make connections between different trends and events and historical persons. This is done by working carefully with concepts that help to clarify the past by explaining patterns in historical development. Conceptual thinking links various events together. For example, conceptual thinking has produced the three major themes of this course (relations between diverse peoples; relations between peoples and environs; and the emergence of regional identities) and it also has enabled us to divide the course chronologically into two cogent periods. Conceptual thinking also links local and regional history to broader contexts, such as national and international developments. For example, the late-18th-century rise of the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest and the late-19th-century emergence of the logging and fishing industries can both be regarded as aspects of a changing global system of market capitalism.

Conceptual thinking permits us to pull together selectively a variety of issues, sources, and events into explanations of the past. You will be asked to develop such explanations in essays composed for a midterm written assignment and a final exam. Writing these essays successfully will require the integration of material from all parts of the course—lectures, readings, research projects—into essays that argue a thesis in response to an exam question, and demonstrate historical and conceptual thinking. In order to help you prepare for these essay assignments I have included a list of suggestions about writing essays in appendix C.

To keep these course objectives in mind and to make attaining them more manageable, I spell out a few Learning Objectives for each of the eleven lessons of HSTAA 432. These objectives explain what information and skills you are asked to master in each section of the course.

Materials Needed to Complete the Course

You will need the following materials to complete this course successfully.

• Course Syllabus. The Course Syllabus contains the introductory material for the course; the Course Syllabus; descriptions of the various reading and writing assignments; assorted instructions and suggestions; and eleven lessons covering a wide range of topics in Pacific Northwest history. Among the lessons are twenty-seven short essays that I have written about key themes in regional history. For the purposes of HSTAA 432, I call these "lectures"—in part because they are based on what I say to on-campus students—even though they have been written with Distance Learning students in mind.
• Readings packet. This contains a selection of twelve readings concerning different aspects of regional history. Some of the readings are primary sources; that is, they were created by historical actors who lived through the events being depicted. Other readings are secondary works; that is, they are essays written by historians long after the events they depict took place. As the course goes on, you will be asked to dissect these two different kinds of materials.
• Three paperback books. The readings in the readings packet are generally excerpted from longer works, such as entire books, journals, or manuscripts. The three paperback books are complete works that you are expected to read in their entirety. One of them is a textbook, and the other two are primary sources documenting specific issues in 20th-century Northwest history.
• Access to research materials. You are expected to complete an independent research project resulting in a substantial paper that uses primary sources. You are expected to choose the topic of your own research project, in consultation with the instructor. In order to complete the project, you must have access to enough primary–source material to provide an adequate basis for research. These materials might be explorers' accounts, family letters, journals of the overland migration, or old newspapers, for example. They might be located in a nearby library or museum, in your attic, in a historical society, via interlibrary loan, over the Internet, and in a host of other places. But keep in mind that research in materials other than the readings in the required books, Course Syllabus, and readings packet is expected in HSTAA 432.
• Access to the Internet and to e-mail. By using e-mail, you will be able to communicate quickly with the course instructor. There is a growing variety of primary sources and secondary materials on regional history available on the Internet, and these can supplement what is offered here and may be tapped as part of your research project.

Required Readings and Why They Were Chosen

Virtually everything that you learn in this course will be gained through reading and through thinking and writing about what you have read. For that reason, I think it is important to say a few words about why I have chosen the assorted readings assigned in HSTAA 432. In part I wish to explain what I want you to get out of the readings, but I am also hoping to account for what distinguishes this course of study in Pacific Northwest history from other courses on the same theme. I have grouped the different readings together as follows: texts, primary sources, secondary works.

Texts: There are two basic "texts" that cover the entire span of Pacific Northwest history. One is the textbook by Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History , rev. ed. (Lincoln, 1996). The other is the series of twenty-seven lectures included with the Course Syllabus. You might think of these two readings as the dual backbones of the course. There is some overlap to them, but I have tried to make them complementary. For example, Carlos Schwantes is a specialist on the period 1880–1920 and treats that period at some length in his text; consequently, I have prepared relatively few lectures on that era. By contrast, I am more interested in relations between Indians and non-Indians before 1880 and on the effect of the cold war on the Northwest, so I do a little more with those topics in my lectures.

Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest, is the standard textbook in the field. It is a valuable resource both for this course and for after this course is over. If you plan to go on to teach Pacific Northwest history in secondary schools, for example, The Pacific Northwest can serve as a standard classroom reference with many tools. It has an appendix that paints a statistical portrait of the region, and offers thorough lists of works for additional reading. It is nicely illustrated and relatively well written. It covers virtually every important topic in regional history, and contains a useful index. It treats Oregon, Idaho, and Washington roughly equally, which is unusual. In most accounts of the Pacific Northwest, Idaho gets slighted. But Schwantes teaches at the University of Idaho and has written a textbook solely on that state (In Mountain Shadows), and he gives Idaho roughly equal billing in our textbook.

If The Pacific Northwest has one limitation, in my opinion, it is that it reads too much like a textbook. It treats virtually every topic in a very even–handed way and, despite the subtitle, seldom offers elaborate interpretations. In my twenty-seven lectures, by contrast, I try to be more provocative. I hope you will find those lectures to contain a more personal perspective on the history of the Pacific Northwest. In them I draw rather heavily on my own research interests (on Indians, on world's fairs, on urban development, and on the cold war in the Northwest). I have developed these lectures for my on-campus students at the University of Washington. Because most of those students (like me) come from western Washington, the lectures focus more on that part of the region than on the other parts. Unlike Schwantes, I don't try to give Idaho or Oregon equal coverage. I also use the lectures to try to connect the past to the present. Indeed, the first two lectures try to set up the rest of the course by beginning with very current concerns.

Primary sources: While the Schwantes textbook and my twenty-seven lectures cover the entire span of Pacific Northwest history, the other readings focus on particular events and topics. For purposes of discussion, I want to break them down into two kinds of accounts—primary sources and secondary works. Primary sources assigned include the following (listed in the order in which they will be used). I have added a few words describing the contents.

• William Dietrich, Final Forest: The Battle for the Last Great Trees of the Pacific Northwest (New York, 1993)—a journalist's account of the controversy in the 1980s and early 1990s over old-growth forests and the endangered spotted owl.
• Captain George Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World . . ., vol. II (London, 1798), 220–316—an account of the English exploring expedition which made the first non-Indian discovery of Puget Sound in 1792.
• "George Simpson's Remarks connected with the Fur Trade &c. in the course of a Voyage from York Factory Hudsons Bay to Fort George Columbia River and back to York Factory 1824/25" (typescript on file at Hudson's Bay Company Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada), 42–96, 117–57, 173–95—the personal diary and corporate report of a fur trade official's travels to the Pacific Northwest.
• James G. Swan, The Northwest Coast; or, Three Years' Residence in Washington Territory (New York, 1857), 17–117, 133–97, 277–305, 327–407—the account of an early American settler who dwelled on Willapa Bay during the mid-1850s.
• "H.H." [Helen Hunt Jackson], "Puget Sound," Atlantic Monthly 51 (February 1883): 218–31—a short description of western Washington on the eve of the railroad's arrival and the onset of large–scale industrialization.
• Abigail Scott Duniway, Path-Breaking: An Autobiographical Account of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States (Portland, 1914), 2–27, 124–72—the reminiscences of a prominent suffragist in the region who also happened to travel the overland trail to Oregon during the 1850s.
• Lois Phillips Hudson, "Children of the Harvest," in Reapers of the Dust (Boston, 1964), 101–13—the only piece of purposeful fiction in the group, this short story is based on the author's experience migrating from North Dakota to Washington during the Great Depression.
• Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Seattle, 1979)—the autobiography of a Japanese American woman who grew up in Seattle during the 1920s and 1930s and whose family was interned during the Second World War.
• William Kittredge, "Owning It All," in Owning It All (St. Paul, 1987), 55–71—a chapter set in southeastern Oregon from the family history of one of the West's best–known modern writers.

In devising a list of primary sources, I have tried to accomplish a number of goals. Above all, I want to provide you with a set of voices from other times. Primary sources convey the thoughts and efforts of people who lived through or "made" the past we are studying. As part of encouraging you to think historically, I intend for you to be able to understand the perspectives of people who lived in the past, to grasp that their worldviews differed from our own. To appreciate the people of the past "on its own terms," I think you need to read not only the words that Carlos Schwantes and other historians and I have written about them, but also what those people in the past themselves said and thought. Moreover, I don't think it is appropriate to assign just a few pages of those voices from the past. To fully appreciate viewpoints from another time, I want you to immerse yourself in those viewpoints for a while—in a few cases, for more than one hundred pages. For this course I have chosen primary sources that I find to be particularly stimulating; I hope you will agree.

I want you to try to compare and contrast different viewpoints from the past as well. You will notice that I assign primary sources from different periods, and that the authors of the accounts include men as well as women, British subjects as well as American citizens, whites as well as one non-white. How did these different voices comment on the same topics and concerns? Finally, I want you to grow more adept at being skeptical about what you read. You ought to learn how to detect and make allowances for the biases and personal agendas in primary sources (as well as secondary works). For instance, many of the sources from early years in the Pacific Northwest provide lots of information about Indians. I ask you to try to determine how much of that information is reliable and accurate, and how much of it mirrors the prejudices and needs of the white authors.

Because reading primary sources is such an important part of the course, I devote one written assignment to having you critique one or more sources. I also expect to see you refer to primary sources on the midterm and final exam essays, and to use primary sources in your research project. To help you read primary sources critically, I provide a list of study questions for each reading assignment, in addition to the material in appendix A. These questions suggest things to consider as you are reading the documents. I use these questions to identify what I regard as some of the more important aspects of the account, and to try to heighten your interest in and engagement with the documents. Included with the study questions are short biographies of the authors of the primary–source readings, so you can get some idea of where the authors were "coming from" when they wrote.

Secondary works: In addition to reading the "texts" by Schwantes and myself and the primary sources created by historical voices, I also ask you to read several articles by historians. These articles are secondary works, i.e., accounts of the past created by people who did not live through the events being described. The secondary accounts, all of which originally appeared in scholarly journals of history, appear in the following sequence.

• Alexandra Harmon, "Lines in Sand: Shifting Boundaries between Indians and Non-Indians in the Puget Sound Region," Western Historical Quarterly 26 (Winter 1995): 428–53—a study of how native peoples of western Washington have been defined and defined themselves through their encounters with non-Indians.
• Marilyn P. Watkins, "Contesting the Terms of Prosperity and Patriotism: The Politics of Rural Development in Western Washington, 1900–1925," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 87 (Summer 1996): 130–40—a case study of populism in Lewis County, with special emphasis on women's roles.
• Dana Frank, "Race Relations and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1915–1929," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 86 (Winter 1994/95): 35–44—an analysis of union members' attitudes and policies toward people of color.
• Wesley Arden Dick, "When Dams Weren't Damned: The Public Power Crusade and Visions of the Good Life in the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s," Environmental Review 13 (Fall/Winter 1989): 113–53—an explanation of why people in the 1930s expected to gain from construction of dams on the Columbia River system.
• Roger Daniels, "The Exile and Return of Seattle's Japanese," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 88 (Autumn 1997): 166–73—a summary of the experience of one community's Issei and Nisei during World War II.

Secondary accounts demand the same kind of scrutiny as primary sources, for their authors too bring biases and agendas to accounts of the past. You ought to learn how to identify and critique those biases and agendas. One difference with secondary accounts, though, is that their authors generally rely on a range of primary sources as their evidence for reconstructing what happened in the past. In reading secondary accounts, then, you get to observe how historians have used and interpreted primary sources, and constructed arguments about the past. Besides asking you to critique at least one primary source, I ask you to write a critique of at least one of the five historical articles.

Learning to work with both primary sources and secondary works is crucial. In writing essays for exams, you will need to draw upon both kinds of materials. Moreover, when you write up your own research project, you will be investigating primary sources (and probably secondary materials, too) and your own writing will resemble what other historians do—rely upon primary sources and other historians' work to create a persuasive account of the past.

Let me add here that we expect you to examine everything in HSTAA 432 critically, with a healthy dose of skepticism. It is all right to challenge the authors that you are reading, and that includes me! One of the most satisfying things about teaching is discussing ideas and methods, and we welcome your critique of the lectures and the selection of readings, and of the different parts of the course. This course has benefited consistently from students' questions and suggestions, and we welcome your ideas, even if they disagree with our own.

Organization and Themes

The course has been organized with an eye to both chronological and thematic patterns. Let me take up each organizing method.

In HSTAA 432, it is assumed that the past is not "dead," but rather continues to live and affect the present. For that reason, the course begins by introducing students to today's Pacific Northwest and placing current issues and concerns into historical context. The first lesson looks in particular at two recent questions—"Who belongs in the Pacific Northwest?" and "To whom does the Pacific Northwest belong?"—in order to get at issues running throughout regional history. We also begin reading a book on recent controversies over endangered species.

The course then moves to consider Pacific Northwest history over two broad eras. Unit One, "Contacts and Contests, 1774–1900" considers the years when different groups of peoples both interacted with one another and tried to assert or retain control over the region. It examines the native peoples of the Northwest; the arrival, influence, and impact upon Indians of European and American explorers, fur traders, missionaries, and settlers; and the eventual success of the United States in acquiring and colonizing a part of the region and asserting control over native peoples through treaties and reservations. In other words, Unit One considers the different contenders for control over the region up to 1900, and the approaches those contenders brought to controlling nature and other people in the region.

Unit Two, "The Urban and Industrial Northwest, 1846–Present" considers the emergence of a modern American region by looking at developments during the later 19th and the 20th centuries. Taking the ascension of U.S. society as its starting point, this portion of the course considers the growth and industrialization of the economy, demographic changes over time, the rise of an urban society, changing political currents, the experiences of minorities, the profound impact of depression and wars during the twentieth century, and the rise of the environmental movement. We pay a lot of attention in this section of the course to the relationship between the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the nation.

Apart from chronology, three connected sets of themes provide a topical focus for the course, and will require your attention on exams. One is the changing circumstances of and relationships between the diverse peoples and cultures of the region. The chronology of the course begins with the advent of European explorers in the 18th century, but it pays ample attention to the experiences of both native peoples in the Northwest and the assorted immigrants who arrived from other parts of North America and from Europe and Asia. Demographic diversity is a constant in regional history and in this course.

Another set of themes revolves around diverse people's uses for and attitudes toward natural resources. Of course, different groups and cultures had different uses for and ideas about such things as forests, fish, and land, and these uses and ideas changed over time. It is important to understand how some peoples were able to assert their values and uses of natural resources over those of others. We talk about the different uses to which natural resources were put, the rise of industrial exploitation of those resources, and the advent of environmentalist programs by which selected resources were either conserved (as in National Forests) or preserved (as in National Parks).

The third set of themes, intimately linked to the first two, pertains to how a sense of regional identity evolved over time in the Pacific Northwest. Two aspects of this identity especially occupy us—the questions of who supposedly belonged and who did not belong in the region, and the matter of how regional residents related to and identified with the natural environs of a distinctive place. To a large extent, the answers to these questions were shaped by the agendas of the many newcomers who came to colonize, settle, and exploit opportunity in the Northwest, and who made the transition to being "Northwest natives."

How the Course Proceeds—Reading and Assignments

The content and the assignments of the course have both been designed to proceed in a logical sequence.

Reading Assignments

The reading content has been organized both topically and temporally. The content has been divided into eleven lessons. The first ten focus on a particular period and set of developments, and the eleventh deals with the final exam. For the first lesson, I assign readings on the Pacific Northwest in recent times. My aim is to establish the three main, connected themes of the course, and get you to see how those themes are profoundly relevant to today's Northwest.

The next nine lessons move in a primarily chronological fashion from the first European contacts with natives and nature in the Pacific Northwest during the late 18th century, through a variety of developments and events during the 19th and 20th centuries. The readings for each lesson are meant to represent a discrete phase of development, and a discrete set of topics, in the history of Washington and the Pacific Northwest, but there is considerable overlap. Lesson Five, for example, looks at the application of American Indian policy to the Northwest between 1846 and 1900, while Lesson Six covers the same chronological ground but with a focus on urban and industrial development among American settlers.

Study Questions

One key to success in engaging with the reading materials is to work with the study questions for each lesson. These have been designed to help you get the most out of each reading. The study questions identify important issues in the readings, including ideas or insights that illuminate the main themes of the course. We expect you to keep them in mind as you are doing the reading, and to try to answer each of them as you think about what you are seeing. The study questions do not cover every important issue, and we don't want you to limit yourself to thinking solely about what the questions are asking. But they are an important guide through the readings.

The study questions may also be used in other ways. To gain practice for written assignments, consider answering one or more study questions on paper for each unit. You could even send us these practice answers via e-mail, if you want to discuss the readings with us in that fashion and get our feedback on your thoughts. Also, if you are having trouble finding a topic for either of the short written assignments, you might use the study questions to frame your paper. Finally, the study questions can help you review for the final exam.

One thing that you will notice about the study questions is that they frequently refer not only to the current lesson but also to previous lessons. In HSTAA 432, it is important to be able to link together different periods, themes, and readings. So, for example, the study questions might ask you to compare and contrast the perspectives of different observers of Indians in the early Northwest, or they might ask you to consider the similarities and differences in the 20th–century experiences of diverse peoples of color in the region. To succeed in this course, particularly on the midterm essay and final exam, you are expected to be able to discuss all the various periods and themes covered. The study questions are meant to help in that regard by urging you to think about more than one chunk of material at a time.

Assignments

As you proceed from lesson to lesson, you will also be asked to complete different written assignments. These, too, have been devised with specific aims in mind. The very first assignment—a questionnaire—is not graded, but is intended to provoke certain questions. The first graded assignment, a critique of one or more primary sources from Lessons Two–Four, is meant to get you thinking critically about primary sources and comparing and contrasting both primary–source accounts and successive eras in early regional history. The next graded assignment, the midterm essay, builds upon the first assignment but asks you to do more in the way of explaining change and discussing readings beyond the primary sources. The following assignments then continue to build on the previous ones, and become more demanding. You are asked to write a critique of a secondary account, to undertake a research project that generally requires use of both primary and secondary works, and take a final exam that demands an essay about the entire span of the course and integrating all the different kinds of readings.

With the exception of the questionnaire, all of the assignments require that you write essays—some short (one–two pages) and some long (six–eight pages). All the assignments require that you mention the readings in some fashion, and over time you are expected to discuss not one but two or several readings in the same essay. In short, your skills at reading and writing critically are expected to improve, and at the same time you are expected to write essays that blend together more and more readings, make more and more complicated arguments, and cover more and more years.

HSTAA 432 entails six written assignments, and all six must be completed to pass the course. Even if your score on five assignments amounts to a passing grade for the course, you must complete the sixth assignment to pass the course. Moreover, the course is designed so that the assignments are completed and submitted in the order given in the following chart. However, you are welcome—indeed, encouraged—to begin thinking about and working on the fifth assignment, the research project, before you have finished the previous four assignments.

You need to be conscious of the pace at which you are completing this course. Distance Learning requires that the course be completed in no fewer than two months and no more than three months. In extenuating circumstances, we will consider requests for a one–time, three–month extension to complete the course. However, two-thirds of the written assignments (i.e., Assignments 1–4) should be satisfactorily completed in order for us to grant this extension.

The following chart spells out the sequence of written assignments and their relative value towards the final grade.

1.         Questionnaire	0%
2.         Short critique of primary sources from Lessons Two–Four	10%
3.         Midterm essay on Lessons Two–Five	25%
4.         Short critique of secondary works from Lessons Five–Eight	10%
5.         Research project—choose your own topic	30%
6.         Final essay exam, covering entire course	25%
	100%

Brief descriptions of the written assignments follow. Please see the "About Your Instructor" page on the Course Syllabus for information about submitting assignments. You will find more information in the Course Syllabus at the point where each assignment comes due.

1. Questionnaire: This form asks for two things. First, we would like some information about you so that we know something about your background, interests, and experience. Second, I have for some years been conducting a survey of my students about their attitudes toward the Pacific Northwest and other places. The survey asks questions designed to provoke thinking about regional identity. I tabulate the results of these surveys and discuss them in Lecture 1. All personal information provided on the questionnaire will remain confidential. Your answers to the survey about regional identity may be grouped together with those of other students and presented or discussed in aggregate form, but the answers will always remain anonymous.
   
   The questionnaire is a mandatory assignment, but it is not graded. Please complete it and send it in before you begin the readings for the course. The instructor will not grade the second assignment until the questionnaire has been received.
   
   
2. Short critique of primary sources for Lessons Two–Four: This assignment asks you to read one (preferably more than one) of the Vancouver, Simpson, and Swan primary sources, and write about it in order to explain the problems with, value in, or insights of primary sources. The purpose is to encourage critical thinking and writing about historical voices sampled in the course. You have a chance to do this assignment twice (you get only one chance at all other assignments). If you are not satisfied with the grade on your first attempt, you may write a second paper—but on a different topic. We will count only the higher of the two grades. For this assignment, you must select your own topic on which to write. However, study questions for each week's reading ought to provide you with ideas for what your paper could be about. The essay ought to be no more than two double–spaced pages of word–processed text.
   
   
3. Midterm essay on Lessons Two–Five: After completing Unit One of the course, you will be asked to write an essay that ties Lessons Two–Five together thematically. This is basically a take–home midterm exam, in which we present you with a choice of questions to answer. The short critique of primary sources will help prepare you for this essay. However, the midterm essay is expected to be longer, e.g., perhaps in the neighborhood of five to seven double–spaced, word–processed pages. Moreover, the concern is more with explaining what happened in the Northwest between 1775 and 1900, using conceptual and historical thinking, rather than dissecting one or more readings. You are expected to state and develop a thesis or argument that responds to the question being asked, and to cite readings explicitly and use them as evidence. See the suggestions in appendix C.
   
   
4. Short critique of secondary works from Lessons Five–Eight: This assignment asks you to read and critique one (or more than one) of the scholarly articles assigned for these lessons (Harmon, Frank, Watkins, Dick, and Daniels). The purpose is to encourage critical thinking and writing about secondary materials. How have historians constructed their arguments? What kind of evidence have they used? Are they persuasive or not, and why? Do you detect flaws in their evidence or reasoning? Again, you choose the topic to write on, and the study questions may point you to a good one.
   
   
5. Research project—due before Lesson Ten: You must choose the topic for your research project, although you are encouraged to consult with the instructor about it. You have two options for completing your research project. Both options entail research in primary sources and probably secondary works, too. In both cases, you are welcome to submit one rough draft of your research project to the instructor for review and suggestions, before submitting the final draft.
   
   One option is the standard research paper on a topic of your choice. Using primary sources and most likely secondary materials, too, you are expected to research and write a paper of about 7–9 typed, double–spaced pages. The paper ought to have footnotes or endnotes or some other consistent and clear way of citing sources. In picking your own topic, you are urged to consult with the instructor, who will likely have suggestions about where to go for research. The topic must relate in a clear way to issues or themes raised in the course materials.
   
   A second option has been designed with prospective teachers in mind, although anyone enrolled in the course is welcome to try it. The assignment is to develop a packet of primary–source materials for use in a secondary–school course on state and regional history. This packet would permit teachers and students in that course to explore a significant topic or issue in Pacific Northwest history. This project ought to include an introduction to the issue written for teachers; information about additional resources and possible lesson plans; and a careful and annotated selection of primary sources, suitable for middle– or high–school students, that illuminates a particular issue, event, or trend in Pacific Northwest history.
   
   
6. Final essay exam, covering entire course: The essay exam will be comprehensive, covering all lessons and readings in the course. Again, you are asked to explain developments in the region, to make an argument or thesis in response to the question, and to cite the appropriate readings in support of your thesis. Lesson Eleven is devoted to preparing for the final exam. The test itself will take three hours and needs to be proctored.

Syllabus

Combining the reading and written assignments together, we have the following syllabus.

Lesson		Readings	Assignment
Lesson One: Introduction to Pacific Northwest History		Lectures 1–2 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest, 1–16; Dietrich, Final Forest, 15–177.	Assignment 1: Questionnaire
Unit One: Contacts and Contests, 1774–1900
Lesson Two: Imperial Rivalry, Exploration, and the Maritime Fur Trade 1741–1806		Lectures 3–4 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, 19–68; Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World . . ., vol. II: 220–316.
Lesson Three: Fur Traders, Indians, and Anglo–American Rivalry for the Northwest, 1806–46		Lectures 5–8 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, 68–98, 113–19; Simpson, "George Simpson's Remarks connected with the Fur Trade &c . . .," 42–96, 117–57, 173–95.
Lesson Four: Settlers, Indians, and the Americanization of the Pacific Northwest,1834–1900		Lectures 9–10 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, 99–113, 119–42; Swan, The Northwest Coast, or Three Years Residence in Washington Territory, 17–117, 133–50, 277–305, 392–407.	By now you should have submitted Assignment 2
Lesson Five: Relations between Indians and Non-Indians in the American Northwest		Lectures 11–12 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, 143–53; Swan, 151–97, 327–391; Harmon, "Lines in Sand," 428–53.	Assignment 3: Midterm Essay
Unit Two: The Urban and Industrial Northwest, 1846–Present
Lesson Six: Cities, Hinterlands, and Extractive Industry, 1850–1920	Lectures 13–16 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, 153–250; "H.H." [Helen Hunt Jackson], "Puget Sound," 218–31.
Lesson Seven: The Northwest as a Political and Economic Colony, 1880–1940	Lectures 17–19 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, 251–395; Duniway, Path-Breaking, 2–27, 124–72; Watkins, "Contesting the Terms of Prosperity and Patriotism," 130–40; Frank, "Race Relations and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1915–1929," 35–44; Dick, "When Dams Weren't Damned," 113–53; Hudson, "Children of the Harvest," 101–13.
Lesson Eight: World War II and 20th–Century Diversity in the Pacific Northwest	Lectures 20–22 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, 408–24; Sone, Nisei Daughter, entire; Daniels, "The Exile and Return of Seattle's Japanese," 166–73.		Assignment 4: Short critique of secondary works from lessons 5–8
Lesson Nine: The cold war in the Pacific Northwest	Lectures 23–25; Schwantes, 424–76.		Assignment 5: Research Project
Lesson Ten: Environmentalism and Regional Identity, 1960–1997	Lectures 26–27 in the Course Syllabus; Schwantes, 399–407, 477–522; Kittredge, "Owning It All," 55–71; Dietrich, 178–289.
Lesson Eleven: Preparing for the Final Exam			Assignment 6: Final Essay Exam

Grading

The University of Washington grades numerically, using a range from 0.0 to 4.0. Each assignment will be evaluated with a single number, such as 3.7 or 2.1. The University's General Catalog spells out the following range of grades.

A	4.0–3.9	C	2.1–1.9
A–	3.8–3.5	C–	1.8–1.5
B+	3.4–3.2	D+	1.4–1.2
B	3.1–2.9	D	1.1–0.9
B–	2.8–2.5	D–	0.8–0.7 (lowest passing grade)
C+	2.4–2.2	E	0.0

All grades for the course are based on written work—specifically, the five essays you will write. To succeed you will need to write effective essays that demonstrate historical and conceptual thinking. In evaluating written assignments 2–6, then, we will look to see that you have an appropriate thesis or argument; that it is developed clearly; that you use ample, specific evidence from the readings to support your argument; that you account for the complexities of issues; and that historical facts, writing, grammar, and spelling are correct. We expect your writing to show that you have done a thorough job on the reading assignments and thought critically about them, that you are thinking historically and conceptually, and that you are making connections between the different readings and eras under consideration.

When grading history essays, we take into account a combination of factors. This is hardly an exact science, but below is a chart giving criteria we use in evaluating midterm and final exam essays. (Criteria for shorter assignments and the research project will be quite similar, except you won't be responding to specific questions as in the case of the midterm and final. The criteria for each assignment are spelled out in more detail elsewhere.) An asterisk by one criterion indicates that this problem alone can drop an essay into this category.

For grades in the A and A– range (4.0–3.5)

1. Question is clearly and methodically addressed.
2. All subtopics of a question are covered.
3. Writing is grammatically correct.
4. Spelling is correct.
5. Evidence is presented to substantiate the positions taken on a question.
6. Evidence is factually correct and properly attributed.
7. Student is able to draw material from lessons, textbook, and other readings as necessary.

For grades in the B+, B, and B– range (3.4–2.5)

1. Question is clearly and methodically addressed.
2. Virtually all subtopics of a question are covered.*
3. Writing shows only slight grammatical problems.
4. Spelling is substantially correct.
5. Evidence is presented to substantiate most positions taken on a question.*
6. There are relatively few factual errors, but there are some mistakes.*
7. Student is able to draw material from lessons, textbook, and other readings as necessary.

For grades in the C+, C, and C– range (2.4–1.5)

1. On the whole, the question is clearly and methodically addressed, but there is some confusion in organization.*
2. Most subtopics of a question are covered, but significant ones are omitted.*
3. Writing shows enough grammatical problems to make meaning unclear.*
4. Misspellings become distracting to reader.
5. Evidence is presented to substantiate most positions taken, but there are gaps.*
6. There are substantial and repeated factual errors.
7. Student is able to draw some material from lessons, textbook, and other readings as necessary, but omits obvious evidence.*

For grades in the D+, D, and D– range (1.4–0.7)

1. Student fails to address a substantial portion of the question, but does address some aspects, or organization is inappropriate and confusing.*
2. Numerous and important subtopics are neglected.*
3. Writing shows grammatical problems throughout which, despite student's mastery of the material, confuses the reader's attempts to understand the student's meaning.*
4. Misspellings distract reader.
5. Evidence is not provided for important sections of the answer.*
6. There are substantial and repeated factual errors.
7. Student repeatedly fails to draw on evidence from lessons and textbook and other readings.*

For grades of E (0.0)

1. Student fails to address the question.*
2. Student does not cover subtopics essential to the question.
3. Writing shows grammatical problems that substantially interfere with understanding student's meaning.*
4. There are obvious and chronic misspellings.
5. Evidence is not provided to substantiate positions.*
6. There are numerous serious factual errors.*
7. Student repeatedly fails to draw on evidence from lessons or textbook or other readings.

To make our expectations clearer, let me add more detail about what we generally find that sets "A" essay apart. It includes an effective introduction that presents a clear argument, pursues that argument from start to finish, and ends well. It balances evidence and analysis in support of the argument, uses appropriate and direct language, and acknowledges and documents sources of evidence. In the case of a research project, "A" work employs a consistent, standard system of citations (e.g., footnotes or a bibliography). In the case of an exam essay, readers know precisely from where evidence comes ("Vancouver said . . . ," or "Watkins argues . . ."). In general, "A" work maintains a high level of excellence throughout. It shows creativity, thoughtfulness, and good historical and conceptual thinking. We expect you to build arguments, develop explanations, and offer insights in your written assignments. By contrast, simply knowing facts and repeating them is no better than "C" work. Again, keep in mind that this is an upper–division course.

University regulations about plagiarism will be followed strictly. The UW Distance Learning Student Handbook summarizes those and other university regulations.

Information about John Findlay, Course Developer

I am a professor in the Department of History at the University of Washington, Seattle. I was born in Seattle in 1955 and grew up in Shoreline, a suburb just to the north of Seattle. I attended Western Washington State College in Bellingham and the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma (A.B., 1976) as an undergraduate, and then earned my M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1982) from the University of California, Berkeley. By a series of what I think of as accidents, I ended up specializing in the history of the American West and began writing about the history of California and Nevada. My dissertation and first book examined the development of gambling in successive American Wests from early Jamestown to modern Las Vegas. I spent a year teaching at the University of Washington in 1983–84, then was hired by the History Department at Penn State—a long way from the West I was studying.

Although native to the Pacific Northwest, I didn't begin serious study of the region's history until my second research project. After examining the development of Las Vegas, I grew interested in cities of the modern Far West. In particular I became interested in the special kinds of orderly enclaves that emerged in rapidly growing cities during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to focusing on Disneyland and greater Los Angeles, Sun City and greater Phoenix, and Stanford Industrial Park in Silicon Valley, I undertook research on the Seattle World's Fair of 1962 and the creation of the Seattle Center. This drew me into Pacific Northwest history, particularly the modern era. My work on the Seattle World's Fair was published as a chapter in my book Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture after 1940 (Berkeley, 1992).

In the middle of this research project, I had the good fortune to be hired by the University of Washington in 1987 to teach the history of the American West and Pacific Northwest. Since that time, I have taught the History of Washington and the Pacific Northwest on campus virtually every year. I have enjoyed the course a great deal. Although most of my own research is on the 20th–century West and Northwest, I have loved learning about the encounters between Indians and non-Indians, the experiences of exploration, the fur trade, and settlement, and many other 18th- and 19th-century developments. Of course, the University of Washington makes the course an easy one to teach by making so many resources available for it. It has the very best library for doing regional history, and a host of well–informed people who share my interest.

Much of the pleasure I take in teaching this course, both on campus and through distance learning, derives from my experiences with students. They respond positively to the course, in part because it covers ground that is somewhat familiar to them and in part because it gets them thinking in new ways about things they have taken for granted. The assigned research project can be a particularly satisfying thing for students, because it gives them a chance to explore issues in which they have long had a personal interest.

In the course of teaching HSTAA 432 on campus, I have been stimulated to research new topics. I have become interested in the nature of regional identity, and you see the results of that interest in the first, second, and last lectures in the Course Syllabus. I have also begun to write about Hanford and the experience of the cold war in the Northwest, and you see some of the results of that work in the section on the cold war. I have become intrigued by urban development in the region, particularly in Washington State, and I hope to write a history of Seattle some day.

History for me is both vocation and avocation. I bring work home with me, and read works of history for pleasure as well as for professional reasons. I read regional newspapers with an eye to keeping up with current events as well as seeing how the past continues to work itself out in the present. My family (wife and two teenage sons) supports my interest without grumbling too much. My wife majored in history in college, and my high–school son finds history interesting, too. (This surprises me for many reasons. One of them is that, when I was in high school, I was quite outspoken about my opinion that history should not be a required course! Life takes interesting turns.)

For pleasure my wife and sons travel with me around the Northwest together, visiting historic sites and natural wonders. We attend Husky football games and Mariner baseball games with some regularity. I enjoy playing and watching sports and going to theater.

The more I study the Northwest, the more I realize that I feel very at home here. In many ways my efforts at regional history have become concerned with appreciating the Pacific Northwest. "Appreciating" something, of course, suggests having a favorable opinion about it, and I am sure some of that favorable opinion about the Northwest influences me. But for our work together in HSTAA 432, I would like to emphasize such older definitions of the verb "to appreciate" as to "comprehend with knowledge, judgment and discrimination" and "to judge with heightened perception and understanding." In other words, history can help us value the Northwest without being chauvinistic or provincial about it. Whether we are fond of the region or not, historical study ought to push us to see the Northwest in more complicated terms, to understand its problems as well as its promise, and to view it not only through our own eyes but also through the eyes of different people, including those from earlier times.

Acknowledgements

Although I am identified as the developer of HSTAA 432, this course in fact reflects many people's contributions over the years I have been teaching it at the University of Washington. Many people in the Department of History and UW Extension have proven very supportive of my efforts teaching regional history. I cannot name them all, but I would like to mention a few who have proven especially helpful, and particularly those from whose materials I draw on heavily in this Course Syllabus. I have learned much about teaching history and about the Pacific Northwest from Bonnie Christensen, Caroline Gallacci, Andrea Geiger-Adams, Alexandra Harmon, Bruce Hevly, Matt Klingle, Kathy Morse, Michael Reese, Robert Self, Jen Seltz, Elizabeth Simmons-O'Neil, Jay Taylor, and Richard White. In revising this course and posting some of its contents on a wonderfully illustrated Web site, I incurred debts from Richard Engeman, Louis Fox, Mike Furr, Caroline Gallacci, Chris Latham, Scott Macklin, Kim McKaig, and Carla Rickerson. Many authors, archives, and publishers granted permission to reproduce materials for the site and the course, and I want to thank in particular Judith Hudson Beattie, Keeper of the Hudson's Bay Company Archives at the Provincial Archives of Manitoba, and Richard Mackie of Victoria, B.C., for their generosity. Finally, let me note that the course has been improved dramatically by what both on-campus and distance-learning students have taught me over the years.

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