An American Dream Broken, Killed, Buried and Never Resurrected

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On Sunday I went to the Museum of Westward Expansion, underneath The Arch in St. Louis and run by the National Park Service.  One wall was devoted to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, another whole wall to the Native American experience during the expansion. 


President Jefferson – through Lewis and Clark, his ambassadors to Plains Indians – told the Indians he just wanted trade, not land.  Lewis and Clark left civilization, near St. Louis, on May 21, 1804.  But one week earlier the U.S. government had passed the Louisianna Territory Act.  It was the first official notice of the U.S. government’s intention to move the Indians east of the Mississippi River to the west of it.  

Lewis and Clark left the circle of the U.S. Post Office before word could reach them.  But I’m sure Jefferson knew this Act was afoot and didn’t tell Lewis and Clark that land west of the Mississippi was indeed going to be an issue.  And the government continued to be duplicitous in its relationship to the Indians, just as it had done in the East, mercilessly breaking treaties.

After the Euro-American settlers moved into the Great Plains and buffalo, elk, antelope and other abundant wild game became scarce, and after the plains were transformed within one generation into agricultural space, some tribes in desperation revived ancient traditions in the early 1890s.

Wovoka, a Paiute medicine man, helped to revive Ghost Dances.  He told Indians that, as a result of the dances, dead ancestors would return, game would be plentiful again, and the white man would disappear. 

The fervor of the Indians’ Ghost Dances brought out the Army.  On December 29, 1890, when the Seventh Cavalry arrived at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, not only scores of Indians, but also “a beautiful dream…died in the snow,” said Ben Black Bear, a Lakota Sioux.  The Park Service wrote, “It was a dream of recovering all that had been lost in the cultural collision with Euro-Americans.”

After Wounded Knee, very few Indians migrated freely across the plains, as they had done for thousands of years.

I think their American dream was broken, killed, buried, and never resurrected.

I think the Park Service was very fair in making the agony of the Indians vivid.

The Huge, Unknown Continent

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I’m reading “Undaunted Courage,” the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition by Stephen Ambrose.  My journey by bus will parallel their expedition's route as I go from Buffalo south to Chicago, then north to Minneapolis, Fargo and Bismark.  I’ll be practically tracing their path through Montana, Idaho and Washington State.

Ambrose writes that in 1803, people knew that the Pacific Coast lay 2,000 miles west of the Mississippi River, which at that time formed the westernmost boundary of America.   But people knew almost nothing of the territory within those 2,000 miles.   There was a suspicion of a mountain range, which the most scientific people of the day thought were as high as the Appalachians.   They knew of a river called the Colorado, and another, discovered by the British, called the Columbia.      Thomas Jefferson knew of the existence of the Missouri River, which empties into the Mississippi River at St. Louis.  But nobody knew where the Missouri River went, or if it was navigable, of if the land was suited to agriculture, or anything about the Native American tribes who lived along it.

Rivers were the highways of America in 1803.  Most roads were impassable to wagons and stagecoaches – goods moved most easily by water.  So finding out if the Missouri was navigable, and if it connected with the Pacific Ocean, was crucial information to President Jefferson.  His American dream was expansion to the Pacific Coast, even though the British, the French and the Spanish had claims on the unknown territory, forming obstacles to his dream.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were willing to risk everything in order to explore it.   Planning and packing for the trip took Lewis several years.   Once he crossed the Mississippi, he could not drop into a store and buy cough syrup if he needed it, as I will be able to do on my trip.  He had to carry everything that he could imagine might be necessary.  And he didn’t know all that might be necessary because he had never been in this territory before, nor had any other white man.  He was a long-time woodsman, frontiersman, and Army officer, however, so he had ideas -- but no sure knowledge -- of what he would need. 

One of his most important priorities, set by President Jefferson, was journaling about what he learned about soil conditions and rainfall (to know if the land was farmable), to map the Missouri River (to know if farm produce could be transported on it), and to write down what he learned about the customs, religions, and herbal knowledge of the Native Americans.

Ambrose said Lewis ran out of tobacco and whiskey and other items during the expedition.  But he returned with enough ink to have taken notes on a whole new, similar trip.  As a writer, I approve of Lewis’s priorities.

And I'll be reporting on a continent that is unknown to me.  I've flown across it twice, but going mile by mile in a bus will be completely different.  It will give me a sense of the size of America.  And as I talk to people in each town and city, I hope to know the size of its heart.

This Trip is Taking Me...

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I am fearful and exhilarated as I think about this trip, which starts two weeks from tomorrow. I’ve decided to relax the pace, take six or seven weeks instead of four, in order to stay two nights in more places. That way I can get to the historical society and library, talk with more folks in each town. I’m fascinated with Fargo and Bismarck, North Dakota, and Billings and Helena, Montana. These towns are peopled with hardy, resourceful folks, I imagine. My ancestors wrested a living out of the harsh North Atlantic; their ancestors wrested it from flowing prairie, enduring harsh Arctic winters.


I’ve got to read several books before and during the trip: “Undaunted Courage,” about the Lewis and Clark expedition; “The Last American Man” was recommended to me yesterday as a description of the men who conquered the West.


And I think constantly of “Travels with Charley.” I re-read the introduction and found solace for my trepidation:


"Once a journey is designed, equipped and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip, a trip takes us."


This trip is taking me already.

The Science of Dreams

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On the train back to New Jersey that day I met Peter, a science teacher in a New Jersey school.  He sat next to me and took out an e-book reader.  I told him about my book and asked him what he thought of my proposed title.  Would he pick up a book with the title “Heart’s Desire: A Journey to Find the New American Dream”?

He thought he might look at the flap or back cover to learn more about what the book covered. 

“Is ‘Heart’s Desire’ too feminine?  Would men shy away from it?”

“Could be.  How about ‘New Horizons’ or ‘Quest’? But I’m a teacher, I let students come up with it, I’ll leave it to you, the writer.”

I asked him how he defined the American dream.  “To raise a happy and healthy family, with enough money to enjoy life.”  I asked if his definition had changed.

“Growing up, we think it’s a given, that we’ll make all our dreams come true.  But very few people actually do.  What’s changed for me is learning how much hard work is involved in trying to procure your own American dream.”

He said investment bankers were most likely to make their American dream come true in today’s economy; but if you watch them, many of them seem to be squandering their money.

“Some of them are living the dream and don’t recognize it – they don’t appreciate what they have,” Peter said.

And then there are others, like the teacher in “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” who feel they are a failure simply because they don’t realize the influence they’ve had.  “Maybe the dream is closer than we think,” Peter said.

They Teach "the American Dream" in German High Schools!

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I sat next to a pretty young woman on a bench in Madison Square Park in New York City the other day and saw she was reading a guidebook of the city. To practice being on the road and striking up conversations with strangers, I asked her if she was a visitor to the city.


Her lovely brown eyes lit up, and she smiled. It turns out that she was born in Germany of Turkish immigrant parents and that her dark brown hair and eyes still cause the fair-haired, blue-eyed German majority to look at her a bit longer, walking down the street. She loves the diversity of this city.


I learned that “the American dream” is taught in German high schools! As I questioned her about it, it seemed that the course covers something more like “the American experience.” The course teaches the European immigrants’ dream of owning land and the subsequent conquering of the frontier. It teaches the reverse of that coin, the herding of the original inhabitants into reservations. The African-American experience is taught, from slavery to emancipation to institutionalized discrimination to Langston Hughes and his dream drying up “like a raisin in the sun” in Renaissance Harlem.


Germans do not have an equivalent “German dream,” though people do want to make enough money to live. Is it possible that Hitler’s disastrous dream of “Lebensraum,” the conquering of adjacent countries to give Germans “living space,” makes Germans today cautious of entertaining dreams that they are afraid might be too ambitious?


This young woman, Feruzan, married to a professor of economics who hopes to teach at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, said Germans have more of a community mindset and are less individualistic than Americans about making huge financial gains. The ideal, she said, would be for individuals to make their economic dreams come true and then share it with individuals who were not as lucky in achieving their American dream.


She asked if something that’s not economic might replace the old American dream. A value besides making lots of money.

I'll Go on a Bus Tour to Find the Essence of America

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I’m planning to finish my bus tour of America to find out how people are defining success, or “the American dream,” for themselves.  I’m wondering whether they’ve had to downsize their dreams or abandon them altogether.


I’ve set aside October to do it.  I’ll buy Greyhound’s one-month hop-on-hop-off ticket for $535 and stay in Motel 6s and Red Roof Inns and HoJos.  I’ll carry a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter to make breakfast easy every day.  I’ll take my laptop and blog daily.  I’ll gather lots of stories about the people I meet and local color and put them into a fantastic book, “In Search of the Essence of America.”   Or, “The American Dream at Risk.”  Since our dreams for the future drive us, they’re our essence.  And it seems our dreams for the future are under pressure from new realities.

My Dad Lived the American Dream

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My father passed away on April 5, one week after I got home from Savannah.  Hospice nurses told me before I left to go ahead and take my trip to Savannah, and they were right.  I had a chance to be with my Dad one more time before he died.  As I kissed him goodbye for what turned out to be the last time, he sat in his wheelchair and said, “Take care of yourself.”  It’s become a holy mission that I don’t always fulfill perfectly.

I gasped when I got the news of his death.  I listened to the message from my brother on my cell phone as I walked on East 66^th Street, just west of York Avenue, after I left a job search interview.  My life is interwoven with New York City.

Everything happened in the next four days:  viewing, funeral, burial at Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn.  I was amazed at how strong I was – no tears.

But looking back, I see that I have felt a constant tug at my heart, an undertow of grief that destabilizes me.  The death of a parent is very big.

My Dad lived the American dream, as it was defined in the 30s and 40s, when he grew up.  He started his first job just one week after high school graduation – people were in a hurry back then to get started on the American dream.  His first position was lower than the secretaries – he added columns of numbers, turning a crank on a mechanical computer.  After many struggles, difficulties, and bitter disappointments when he was passed over for promotion, he retired at age 62 from a corner office in a skyscraper in New York City’s financial district, near Wall Street. 

He said the secret of his success was hard work and perseverance.  He told me to keep my shoulder to the wheel, my eye to the future, my nose to the grindstone and my ear to the ground.

I’ve maxed out on his principles of hard work and perseverance and have been laid off three times in the past eight years, twice due to a merger and once due to a corporate bully having her way.

Will my generation (boomers) and our successors do better than our parents?  Probably not, for the first time in American history.