Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory by Cynthia Culver Prescott (review)

Reviewed by: Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory by Cynthia Culver Prescott Andrea G. Radke Moss Cynthia Culver Prescott, Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. 408 pp. 39. 95 (hardcover). In Pioneer Mother Monuments, Cynthia Culver Prescott carefully examines how American communities have commemorated their pioneering past through public statuary and monuments, with an emphasis on pioneer mother statues. Indeed, gender is central to uncovering meaning in these statues, because traditional portrayals of "self-made men and self-sacrificing Pioneer Mothers" (15) have reassured westerners of their place in a changing world. Prescott considers key people and events in western pioneer history that have been immortalized in statuary form and analyzes the social-cultural context around their creation and installation. She refers to these highlighted episodes as "lieux de mémoire, " or "sites of memory" (20), whose meanings are always in flux. Prescott concludes that "American frontier commemoration has changed in reaction to western race relations, shifting gender norms, and religious and regional identity. " (4–5) Memory studies is an important lens for Prescott's book. She has added to other histories of memory and the West by analyzing pioneer monuments as concrete examples of constructed public memory. The content is thickly layered and exhaustively researched. Focusing on over 200 western monuments, especially 185 pioneer statues, Pioneer Mother Monuments shows how "historical memory of the frontier remains central to American identity. " (5) The sheer number of statues allows Prescott a comprehensive approach. Rather than seeing individual statues in isolation from others, Prescott successfully categorizes single monuments as examples of larger movements in statuary, both in meaning and in design. Prescott connects the construction and meaning of pioneer monuments to a broader chronology of public memory. In the 1890s, pioneer monuments followed a Turnerian prototype, wherein statues portrayed "an inevitable progression from Indian savagery to white civilization that justified End Page 227 white settlers' displacement of Native peoples. " (24) Settler colonialism in western pioneer statues corresponded with the racist retrenchment of Lost Cause ideology and the erection of Confederate statues in the South. Both relied on narratives of white nationhood. By the 1920s, emphasis on masculine frontier ruggedness gave way to Pioneer Mother Monuments—over two dozen erected between 1929 and 1937. Partly in response to concerns about New Womanhood, these "Prairie Madonnas" reinforced women's traditional roles and moral superiority. Prescott demonstrates masterful conceptual framing here. Pioneer Mother Monuments, with their sunbonnets and forward-facing determination, reified messages of traditional womanhood while also celebrating white advancement over indigenous peoples. Post-World War II anxieties led to shifts in pioneer monuments in both content and style. Sculptors embraced modernistic art forms but reverted to portraying traditional themes. The focus on individual females and maternalism gave way to depictions of strong, authoritative fathers standing next to nurturing mothers of sons. Monuments based on nuclear family structures reaffirmed stability and conventional values amidst fears of atomic war and societal change. In the 1960s, some western communities questioned the dominant themes of manifest destiny found in pioneer monuments. (173) Inspired by Native American activism, westerners made good efforts toward positive representations of indigenous peoples. But attempts to show greater diversity were met with a conservative backlash against "a perceived onslaught of political correctness. " (184) Even as Hispanic and Native groups sought more representation, other westerners "erected pioneer monuments to reinforce their cultural dominance. " (209) These "Monument Wars" continued into recent years as progressive voices have called for the reinterpretation of existing statues or pushed for new public monuments to tell more inclusive stories. At the same time, western communities have engaged rural boosterism to attract heritage tourism with new statues of the pioneering heroes and heroines of the past. Prescott maintains that sites of memory and commemoration for some groups can be sites of trauma and dispossession for other groups. Although this book covers all types of pioneer monuments through all periods of public commemoration, it remains pointedly a gender history with its focus on pioneer mothers. Prescott's approach to the history of the West, gender, race, and group memory is imminently relevant, considering End Page 228 the ongoing debates about the meaning of public memorials, especially. . .