41st Annual Carl Becker Lecture

One of the most distinguished historians of the American West, Elliott West, will deliver the annual Carl Becker Lecture on Wednesday, September 17 at 7 PM in Room 115 of Seerley Hall, University of Northern Iowa. The talk, entitled The West Before Lewis and Clark: Three Lives, will trace what the lives of one man and two women tell us about interaction of the Native and European cultures across the Great Plains in the tumultuous century and a half that preceded the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804-06. Their stories bring us to a murder in Texas, deadly ambushes in New Mexico and Nebraska, a Plains Indian delegation at the French royal court, and to St. Louis for the reunion of a mother and lost son after four decades. Together, they offer a more complex understanding of the land that the United States was beginning to incorporate into its territory, the region where we now live. Elliott West is the Alumni Distinguished Professor at the University of Arkansas and has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching. His books have covered topics ranging from gold rushes and saloons to growing up on the frontier and the Nez Perce War. He is widely recognized as one of the most engaging speakers in the profession. The talk is funded by the Howard Fund and the Department of History.