Whittenberg 1

Mark David Spence. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and Making of the
National Parks. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness as “an area where the earth and
community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not
remain.”1 In his book Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and Making of the
National Parks, Mark David Spence questions this notion since American Indians have
inhabited almost the entirety of the land of the United States for thousands of years.
Contract historian for the National Park Service and adjunct professor of history for the
University of Oregon, Spence‟s first book dispels the old myth of park officials and far too
many scholars that “native peoples avoided national park areas because their places were not
conducive to use or occupation.”2 Perhaps reviewer for Environmental History, Dan Flores
put it best that “Mark Spence has now done in Dispossessing the Wilderness is to show-in a
readable, careful, superbly-documented series of case studies involving three of America's
most famous national parks-that converting Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier into
Euroamericans' fantasy wildernesses actually meant kicking several Indian groups out of
their homes.”3
Dispossessing the Wilderness is a quick read of 139 pages and is broken into ten
short chapters. Spence focuses on three national parks (Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier
as mentioned before) for the following reasons:
First, each supported a native population at the time of its establishment;
second, the removal of Indians from these parks became precedents for the
exclusion of native peoples from other holdings within the national park
system; and third, as the grand symbols of American wilderness, the
uninhabited landscapes preserved in these parks have served as models for
preservationist efforts, and native dispossession, the world over.4
Along with this, Spence also argues that the idea of a “wilderness” is a fairly recent idea and
includes the strange opinion that Indians were merely the “first visitors” to these parks not
unlike the countless tourists of today.5 Written just before Shepard Krech‟s The Ecological
Indian or Andrew Isenberg‟s The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History,
1750-1920, Spence seems to agree with his fellow authors in at least the fact that the North
American continent was not some untouched wilderness but altered and modified by the
native people living there before and after the Europeans arrived. The American idea of
these three parks as a “scenic playground, national symbol and sacred remnant of God‟s
original handiwork” flies in the face of hard evidence and research that Indians lived, hunted
and sometimes fought and died on this land. Spence is also not afraid to use the quotes of
famous environmentalists like Thoreau, Muir or Grinnell to show how their ideas of
wilderness also did not include American Indians. For example, George Bird Grinnell is

1
Wilderness Society’s Website: http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=legisAct&error=404
(Accessed March 10, 2010).
2
Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 5.
3
Dan Flores, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks,”
Environmental History 5 (April 2000): 273.
4
Spence, 5.
5
Ibid.
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well known for helping to establish Glacier National Park due to his visits to the mountains
within the Blackfeet reservation. Using native guides, Grinnell wrote of areas just off Indian
trails as being “absolutely virgin ground with no sign of previous passage.”6 Apparently, the
idea of wilderness never being touched by mankind does not include Blackfeet as really
human by Grinnell‟s definition.
The three case studies show an inconsistent message and policies by the park service.
At Yellowstone, the Indians residing in the area were considered dangerous and a problem
for tourism. Removal had to take place immediately. At the other two parks, Indians were
viewed as part of the parks‟ promotional campaigns. Probably one of the saddest pictures is
found on page 85 of the book where a young Blackfeet boy is in full native garb serving as a
caddy for a visiting golfer. This promoted the idea that Indians wanted tourists to come and
their main goal was to entertain and serve. Eventually all would be removed from the three
park areas and this does not just reflect a short period of time or a particular administration.
The Crow, Bannock and Shoshone were removed in the 1870s from Yellowstone. The
Blackfeet left Glacier in the early 1900s while the last Yosemite family left in 1969. All
have tried in vain to again gain some access to resources of the parks, and Spence covers a
number of these court cases such as 1896‟s Ward v. Race Horse (concerning Bannock
hunting rights at Yellowstone). The final chapter details the past twenty or more years and
how these mindsets have finally started to change.
What do other historians think of Spence‟s work? Perhaps the highest praise comes
from Kurk Dorsey of the University of New Hampshire. In his review for the American
Historical Review, he writes “this is a rare example of a book that is too short” with some
ideas left to footnotes that “cry out for elaboration.”7 Andrew Gulliford, formerly of Middle
Tennessee State University, calls Spence‟s work “a benchmark book” that “neatly intersects
Indian, environmental, Western, and public history disciplines in a clear condemnation of
park service policies.”8 Another reviewer, Robert H. Keller of Western Washington
University, writes
Dispossessing the Wilderness has many virtues. Accurate, detailed accounts
of the creation of Yellowstone and Glacier national parks rest on solid
research, as does the story at Yosemite. Ethnography of pre-park aboriginal
use is excellent. So is the selection of photographs. Clear boundary maps are
helpful even to those familiar with the three parks.9
Mark Harvey of North Dakota State University also compares Dispossessing the Wilderness
to other recent works that cover the relationships between American Indians and the park
system such as Louis Warren's The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in
Twentieth Century America (1997) and Theodore Catton's Inhabited Wilderness: Indians,
Eskimos, and National Parks in Alaska (1997).10 Several reviewers applauded the amount

6
Spence, 78.
7
Kurk Dorsey, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National
Parks,” The American Historical Review 105 (June 2000): 941.
8
Andrew Gulliford, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National
Parks,” The Public Historian 22 (Spring 2000): 88.
9
Robert H. Keller, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National
Parks,“ The Journal of American History 87 (September 2000): 702.
10
Mark Harvey, “Review of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National
Parks,“ Montana: The Magazine of Western History 51 (Autumn 2001): 69.
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of research that went into this work that shows in the extensive notes section. The biggest
complaint by most is not at the author but the publishers who removed the complete
bibliography to save on costs.
As mentioned before, Spence uses a number of quotes from famous
environmentalists throughout his book. He also introduces each chapter with a quote from
an American Indian. One does not have to read in too much to see the irony between each
party. One of note is from Luther Standing Bear in 1933 where he proclaims “we did not
think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams as „wild.‟ Not
until the hairy man from the east came was it wild for us. When the very animals of the
forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the „Wild West‟ began.”11
Year after year, the National Park Service is thought to be one of the most trusted agencies
in the federal government. Documentaries like Ken Burns‟ “The National Parks: America‟s
Best Idea” would not be possible without the American fascination with these areas and
people‟s desire to go back to nature or the wild. However, Mark David Spence has written a
very clear and concise text stating that the National Park Service is no different than the
countless other federal agencies that consistently moved native Indian populations farther
and farther west and finally on to poorly run reservations. Men like National Park Service
Director Horace M. Albright may have been praised for their work on the parks, but Spence
also shows their “piranha-like instincts” to gather up more and more reservation land to
expand park boundaries.12 Dispossessing the Wilderness is not just a rebuttal of the recent
definition of the wilderness or simply another government versus the Indians story.
Spence‟s book shows how intelligent, highly respected men (that are supposed to have a
passion for the environment) can ignore the problem in front of them while justifying their
actions to belittle, remove and perhaps even destroy a people and their way of life. We are
used to vilifying men like Andrew Jackson and events like the Trail of Tears. Spence goes
even deeper than the obvious targets to such honored men as John Muir who called Indians
of the Yosemite “hideous,” “ugly” and had no place in this man-established wilderness.13
Like the many tourists to come, Muir wanted his wilderness unspoiled by these so-called
filthy natives. In the words of cartoonist and sometime environmentalist Walt Kelly and his
alter-ego Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

11
Spence, 25.
12
Ibid., 98.
13
Ibid., 109.