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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Great Plains Quarterly

Series

Black Hills

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Pageant Of Paha Sapa An Origin Myth Of White Settlement In The American West, Linea Sundstrom Jan 2008

The Pageant Of Paha Sapa An Origin Myth Of White Settlement In The American West, Linea Sundstrom

Great Plains Quarterly

As a literary work initiated and directed by a committee of women, The Pageant of Paha Sapa captures the zeitgeist of the post Arontier era through the eyes of the influential women of one small town. Like all origin myths, this script presented the current populace as the rightful heirs of the place and its resources, having won them through persistence, struggle, and divinely ordained destiny. The pageant's message was that "civilizing" influences had transformed the former Indian paradise and frontier hell-on-wheels into a respectable modern community. This theme of social evolution was typical of the larger pageant movement; however, …


"Gold Is Every Man's Opportunity" Castration Anxiety And The Economic Venture In Deadwood, Kyle Wiggins, David Holmberg Oct 2007

"Gold Is Every Man's Opportunity" Castration Anxiety And The Economic Venture In Deadwood, Kyle Wiggins, David Holmberg

Great Plains Quarterly

In one of the most famous and quoted passages from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx observes, "Men make their own history, but not spontaneously, under conditions they have chosen for themselves; rather on terms immediately existing, given and handed down to them." While the historical conditions that engendered the Black Hills gold rush of the mid-1870s were more "forced" by and upon the participants than "handed" to them, Marx's argument resonates loudly with the anti-romantic project of HBO's critically acclaimed Western, Deadwood. Series creator David Milch makes a similar point about the town of Deadwood: …