Western Shenanigans

Outline again..

Now as I have already stated in my last post about my outline, it is very brief and will be worked on and updated on a daily basis as I organize and gather more research.  This will be the basic structure, and will most likely change as I start to write my paper.  I wanted to start it off my briefly telling a story about gambling in an ancient civilization, to show the reader that it is not just another paper about gambling in the west, and that it has to do with a much broader idea of gambling in the world and society.  I will continue on briefly explaining using articles, pictures, and maps from history around the world showing gambling in many different cultures, religions, races, regions, and how each of those societies influenced a game (namely poker) and changed it.  Also how gambling and those integrated traditions have traveled to all corners of the world and will continue to through time.  I will then briefly talk about how gambling traveled to American and how it eventually moved west, just as gambling and the traditions from around the world changed the game at hand.  From their I will get to the meet of my paper "proving that different religions, cultures, races, backgrounds etc. effect gambling and the affects gambling has on those individuals." I will do extensive research on two cultures, a Native American tribe and a town of new immigrants closely settled near to the tribe.  Then I will tear apart with a comb characterizes about each culture.  Using photos, interviews, diaries, legal records, and articles on people’s daily lives as well as gambling that took place during that time, and the affects that it had on their societies.  I will then compare and contrast the societies, and conclude my paper with the evidence or extensive research that, cultures, religions, background, races, etc. all hahasn effect on not only gambling but the world as well.

Download OUTLINE.doc

March 18th: Outline

So this is going to be the structure of my formal outline.  The other outline that I scanned and posted in m y photo album was basically a rough draft of this in order to get all of my ideas on a piece of paper and organize them from there.  Now I remind you this is just the structure, meaning, I don't have the exact information such as research that I am putting my paper, it is more like what each paragraph is going to talk about and what kind of sources I plan on using for that topic.  Just like my bibliography is a working bibliography, this is a working outline.  As I do more research and organize my material, I will be updating my outline so that it eventually IS an outline of my paper.  And again it will change on a daily basis.  I am just slow in organizing and gathering all the information that I need so that I can make it a paper, and not just random facts and such.

March 15th, 2008: Bibliography

Download Bibliography.doc

As of today I only have a few things on my bibliography. There about seven book at the Library of Congress that I have on a shelf waiting for me to come back and get some more research from, as well as their bibliographies.  I also have planned a trip to go to the National Archives which I was unable to do last week.  There, I know that I will find many primary sources as well as other information that can aid me in my research.  I am also going to make a visit to the American Gaming Association in Washington DC.  I found online to be many primary sources to do with my topic; however I cannot access them unless I go there. So hopefully that will work out.  There is an enormous amount of information online.  There is also an enormous about of information that is not true.  Now although have found many websites, there are only a few that I feel are legitimate.  So I am going to stick to those, as well as magazine articles that I have found that are posted online.  I have a lot of information, research, and materials, so now I just need to organize it all and figure out what I want to use in my paper.  That process can take me a while, so if my bibliography looks somewhat plain today, it will have more sources added daily, as I weed through them all.

February 20th: Topic Statement

 

I will write my paper on the minority influence on gambling in the west and the effects gambling had on the minorities between 1800 and 1930.  In this paper I hope to illustrate how Native Americans, Irish, Germans, Hispanics, African Americans, Russians, as well as Italians all had a huge influence on gambling and how gambling affected them in the American west. 
   
    I will use many articles, testimonies, photos, as well as maps to illustrate how events in history affected each minority and how each minority co exited with other minorities.  I will research what each minority contributed to gambling as well as the effects that prohibition and outlawing gambling affected certain individuals not only professionally but privately as well.

    Gambling is one of the favorite pass times in not only America but the world, and it has been for hundreds of years. With each new war, invention, government and generation, gambling changes. In the American west where many different people from many different backgrounds co-existed for many of the same reasons, also influenced not only gambling but American life and culture as we know it.

March 17th, 2008: Rough Outliine

While I was in class, I began jotting down some things that kind of turned into a rough outline of my paper.  I scanned it and posted it to my photo album, but you all most likely can't understand what I wrote since it is very messy.  I basically made a rough outline of what I wanted to write in my paper.  I wrote down how I thought that I would start out my paper and what exactly I wanted to write about.  There are still a lot of questions that need to answered through extensive research, but I still need to go do that.  As I was writing my outline or "brainstorming", it became more clear to me as to what I really wanted to do and how I was going to go about it.  I pretty much know how my paper is going to work and the order that I want everything to be in, as well as what I still need to research and what types of research I am going to use and where.  This whole randomly jotting down stuff actually helped me a lot in organizing my thoughts that were bouncing around in my mind. 

February 13th: Article #2

 

  J.M. Fenster. wrote in the September 1994 issue of American Heritage and article called, Nation of gamblers. (gambling history).  In this article she focused mostly on the history of gambling in American only.  She examined the many different businesses, government officials and the development of modern day gambling.

    Fenster talked about how from the beginning American's have been wishy washy about the whole aspect of gambling. Either it is completely banned or it is welcomed with open arms.  Fenster wrote about how over the past 100 years gambling has become one the largest pass times because, "As the country expanded, each new advance in transportation brought a new chapter in gambling history." Betting on games, horse races, and the development of new games such as the slot machine from California.  Gambling spread faster and brought many people from different backgrounds together. 

February 13th: Article #1

    Jack Kelly explained and answered many questions that I had about gambling in America, its move west, and the different influences that made gambling what it is today in his winter 2006 "American Heritage" article , Poker: the very American career of the card game you can learn in 10 minutes and work on for the rest of your life.  He examined the root of poker as well as how gambling came to America. 

    Kelly wrote about the spread of gambling through Europe and how different aspects of games from other countries and cultures influenced the development of modern day poker.  He than continued on poker as well as gambling in itself, and its introduction to America.  From there he discussed how through wars and government purchases of land through time, the gambling moved along with it. From the Mississippi riverboats during the Civil War to the open frontier, gambling spread like wild fire.

As it spread through America just as it had done in Europe centuries before, the different cultures and races added their "two cents" to the game, which in turn gives up what professional gambling is today in the west.
     

February 13th: Primary Source #2

My second primary source is a testimony of Chin Wing.  In the trial he is asked many questions about gambling and a lottery as well as who took place in the lottery. 

I can use this in my research because it shows again how gambling effected minorities as well as how minorities effected gambling in the west during the 1800s.

February 13th: Primary Sources #1

Gambling was a huge leisure activity during the 1800s.  As the move west grew and grew, and gold became one of the main desires, gambling began to boom as the wealth hungry men to battled for more. 

In this photo one can see how gambling spread through the minorities in the west. The effects they had on gambling and the effects gambling had on them.

In this photo one can see a few Native Americans in southwestern Nevada gambling in 1873.

February 6th, 2008

The second half of The American West book showed in great detail the evolution if the west into what it is today.  One of the topics that I found to be very interesting a KEY to the development of the west was on Chapter 9, which talked about the development of the railroad system.  It examined the how it connected the east and west, changed small towns in west, affects on economy, the pony express, as well as how it affected the Native Americans.  There were many questions that arose while reading the last eight chapters, but I will just list a few that I thought would make a half way decent research paper.  One, How much did the Americans prosper due to the development of the railroad? Second, what effects did the railroad have on the isolated cities and towns in the west? Finally, how did the railroad change the western frontier in regards to the open range?

Moving west had many affects on the Natives already living there, but also on the people moving west and their families they left behind.  Chapter 12 was about "Search for Community".  Although we don't really think much about community as the people moving west did, but what they established effects us today in regards to our family, religion, morals, values and all that jazz.  This chapter discussed how the people moving west had many different types of communities, hardships from being away from the big cities, a HUGE focus on religion, as well as race which affected where many people settled.  Not only did the move west affect the Americans, but it greatly affected the Native Americans as well. A few questions to ponder would be one, what affects did the migration to the west have on the Native Americans? And second, where did different races and religions settle and what types of communities did they generally have?