“A series of doors pretending to be walls”: boundaries of race, identity, and geography in the Western Missouri borderlands, 1803–1833

Abstract

In “‘A Series of Doors Pretending to be Walls’: Boundaries of Race, Identity, and Geography in the Western Missouri Borderlands, 1803–1833,” Sherilyn Farnes analyzes ways in which individuals and groups in the western Missouri borderlands in the early nineteenth century crossed borders of race, identity, and geography. Farnes examines interactions among those living just south of the Missouri River in the early nineteenth century, including Shawnee, Delaware, Kansa, Osage, French settlers, enslaved people, Southern settlers, Baptist and Methodist missionaries, and members of what became The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although at times geographic or societal borders divided these groups, “boundaries [in] the American West are a series of doors pretending to be walls.” Farnes analyzes ways in which members of these supposedly discrete groups crossed borders and walked through “doors pretending to be walls” creating communities on both sides of the perceived geographic or societal boundaries. Despite attempts by the federal government to separate American Indians from their Euroamerican neighbors, missionaries and traders crossed borders into American Indian reserves legally and illegally, as did enslaved people—despite the prohibition of it following the bitter debates of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. American Indians also crossed borders leaving their reserves to trade with those in Missouri. Residents of Missouri in turn drove Latter-day Saints from within the borders of Jackson County in 1833. People crossed racial borders as they chose to intermarry or otherwise associate with those of other racial backgrounds. Borders around identity both solidified and fractured during this time period, as groups and individuals self-identified as well as dealt with imposed identities from others. These borders included shifts in group consciousness from multiethnic villages to identifying as individual nations and drawn borders around religious minorities and American Indians. It also included boundaries drawn and imposed around the identity of individuals of mixed racial descent. Ultimately, this dissertation analyzes connections between groups, bringing them back into conversation with each other, the way in which they were two hundred years ago.