American Origins and the Western Myth
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

The American Origin story is steeped in mythology, Pilgrims, Colonists, Frontiersmen, Explorers, Traders, the Indian "troubles," the French and Indian War, and the Revolutionary War brought the United States of America into being. Then came the Wilderness Road, Westward Ho, cowboys and Indians, the Wild West, the gunfighters, the gold strikes, the Intercontinental Railroad, the ranchers and farmers and the exploitation of the West. The telling was mythic, the people heroic, their feats legendary. It was a story that captured the imagination of the world. Join us as we explore the mythmaking that attended the creation of a nation, the defeat and subjugation of its Indigenous peoples, and its westward expansion that soon reached from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We examine what purpose this mythmaking served.