Signing Dynamics of the Signature Rocks (original) (raw)

“Signing Dynamics of the Signature Rocks,” co-written with the Americanist Jason Weems, Great Plains Quarterly 43 (2023) 115-155.

“Signing Dynamics of the Signature Rocks” establishes more clearly than has been done the character of a significant but not yet fully explained phenomenon of one of the most iconic episodes in the history of the United States. From 1839 to the 1870s, approximately 400,000 Euro-Americans made the overland passage from the Missouri River to the Pacific, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of signatures inscribed onto the immense rock formations that were often used as landmarks along the way--the signature rocks--one rock alone being said in 1860 to have 40,000 to 50,000 signatures. Most trail historians have noted the practice and generally taken it for granted, seeing only a mindset inclined toward what might be called straightforward graffiti or “ego.” However, the fact that mass signing is not found elsewhere in the expansionist culture of the time but only in what was known then as “Indian Country” suggests a deeper motivation, at least for some, for this unique social manifestation. Strongly based on primary sources and visual images from within emigrant culture, this study concludes that mass signing was motivated by a number of cultural dynamics of self-assertion, most notably a sense of trespassing (manifested as simple fear, an awareness of consumption of Indian resources, and/or a sense of contributing to the destruction of the traditional Indian way of life as a result of this consumption), a sense of participation in a great historical movement (whether manifest destiny or a more general sense of a great moment in history of the country), “vainglory” (a superficial awareness of the individual’s own achievements in crossing the continent), and, for the vast majority, the dynamic of tourism (viewing the great landmarks not just through the lens of traditional “curiosity” but now also loosely motivated by the Romantic ideas of landscape and the sublime). At the same time, though in a limited way, the signature rocks became sites of emigrant-Indian contention, with now one side and now another overwriting the inscriptions of the other.