Exploring Cultural Identity at the Nostrum Springs Stage Station in Northwestern Wyoming

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Stagecoaches have been key players in the imagination that is the "Wild West" since the late 19th century. They live on today as one of the main symbols of the mythic American West, perhaps most easily recognized in the form of the Wells Fargo stagecoach that appears in parades across the country. Typically missing from narratives of the American West, which tend to focus on violence, romance, and adventure, are stories of the everyday lives of westerners. This paper focuses on one place, the Nostrum Springs Stage Station in the Red Canyon of northwestern Wyoming, in order to discuss how the methods of historical archaeology can and cannot be used to explore cultural identity, an important aspect of everyday life in the past. The focus of this research is on the Shoshone, who called Red Canyon home long before the stage arrived, and the Nostrums, the family with Swedish heritage who homesteaded in Red Canyon around the turn of the 20th century. These types of investigations are important because the idea of America, which is constantly being renegotiated, often rests on the ideals of an America that never was, marginalizing various groups in the process.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26205