The Significance Of The Frontier In American History

It followed from the lack of organized political life in the backwoods society, that the individual was exalted and given free play. The West was another name for opportunity. Here were mines to be seized, fertile valleys to be claimed; all the natural resources open to the shrewdest and the boldest. The United States is unique in the extent to which the individual has been given an open field, unchecked by restraints of an old social order, or of restrictions of government.8 The self-made man was the Western man's ideal, was the kind of man that all men might become. Out of his wilderness experience, out of the freedom of his opportunities, he fashioned a formula for social regeneration, the freedom of the individual to seek his own. This also was the way of the Utah early settler which was effectively a country unto itself.9 Without hindrances settlers claimed the Salt Lake Valley and made it their own in the manner which they saw fit, relying only on their own better judgment and ability

Patricia Nelson Limerick describes the frontier as being a place of where racial tension predominately exists. In her essay, “The Frontier as a Place of Ethnic and Religion Conflict,” Limerick says that the frontier wasn’t the place where everyone got to escape from their problems from previous locations before; instead she suggested that it was the place in which we all met. The frontier gave many the opportunities to find a better life from all over the world. But because this chance for a new life attracted millions of people from different countries across the seas, the United States experienced an influx of immigrants. Since the east was already preoccupied by settlers, the west was available to new settlement and that

Although “historians no longer use the word “discovery” to describe the European exploration, conquest and colonization of a hemisphere already home to millions of people”, it was one of the greatest and most important discoveries ever in our history that changed the lives of millions of people. (Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), pg 1.) For some the “discovery”of America would mean an opportunity for a better life, for others the “discovery” brought misery and death.

There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough

Throughout history society has to go through many changes that not only affect many of the people but also the areas around the transformation. The main point of Fredrick Jackson Turner’s thesis is what the real essence of America is, and how we’re all influenced by the many changes we have to go through. He believes that American history should not be focused on the extension of European enterprise. The society will have to realize that America will have to be emancipated because of the fact that we had a country with an unlimited amount of boundaries and have to come to realization that we have many closed-spaced limits. The views in the seminal essay share his thoughts on the idea of how the frontier shaped

Topic 1- The frontier had been tamed, great cities and businesses developed, and an overseas empire established, but not all citizens shared in the new wealth, prestige, and optimism.

According to Turner, through America’s conquest of the frontier, the cultural traits of Americans could be credited to the directly to the land and “that coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness; that practical inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things... that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism"(Turner 34). While on the other side of the argument, Pierson believed that traits of modern Americans such as democracy and individualism had already existed in other parts of the world, and the frontier itself had not created whole new theories and ways of

The subject of this chapter summary will be the eighteenth chapter of Alan Taylor’s American Colonies. The chapter is called “The Great Plains” and discusses the history of that geographical region from 1680-1800. Taylor begins by explaining how warfare both sustained and weakened New Mexico. It maintained unity, because without an external enemy to focus on, the Pueblo people would rise up in revolt against Mexico. However, the constant warfare discouraged any new settlers from putting down roots there. Spain's holdings in North America were weakened by the foreign policy of the motherland, which focused on the colonial core of the territory, not the exterior regions. For Mexico, New Mexico was just a buffer zone between itself and other

Furthermore, they announce his claims as valid and reasonable, defending Turner's notions that during the great American frontier "the thinkers were restless and inquiring, but what they lacked was room in which to try out their innovations…The frontier offered them the room and the opportunity." (Webb, 53) While Turner's critics are valid in the sense that Turner's account on the frontier did not reveal the environmental determinism and his lack of revealing the presence of natives with his narrative as profound flaws within his claims, nevertheless, his thesis remains extremely influential within

The concept of white superiority and an ethnocentric view was based upon application of Social Darwinism which support the idea and belief that white civilization and culture was superior to that of the Indians. Americans began encountering the Indians more frequently as people began to follow their dreams westward. American theorist Fredrick Jackson Turner believed that it was the American Frontier that distinguished America from other nations. He described the frontier as both a place and a process because in conjunction to being a physical place the frontier was a series of advancement . It is important to understand this idea in order to understand the American relentless drive to move west. The concept of Manifest Destiny and writings of Turner encouraged settlers to move west which created a direct and inherent conflict between the settlers aided by the government and the American Indians who resided within those lands. This conflict led to the severe mistreatment of the Indians in the expansion into “The West”.

First Essay - Rough Draft The sharp divide between the motives and values of European migrants to the New World, and the Native Americans who had already dwelled there for centuries, characterized the nature of the inception of the United States. The values of these two groups were made clear through many modes of expression that were available at this turbulent time in history, some of these styles of articulation being storytelling and primary source narratives. These works at this place and time period explore the many rigid differences between natives and colonists, particularly their attitudes toward the terrain of the New World and the role of nature in human life in general. European colonists often regarded the landscape of the New

Historian Fredrick Jackson Turner presented a thesis at the worlds Columbian Explosion in Chicago in 1893 to present his view on how the frontier shaped the American history of the westward movement and the expansion. The way that Turner explains the frontier is a space where individuals and society can be renewed, begin again, and seek

Turner’s paper eulogized the frontier, coming on the heels of the U.S. Census Bureau’s announcement that there was no longer a discernable frontier line in 1890. Turner saw the West as a laboratory, where our nation truly created its own identity, away from the European influence felt in the East. There, “out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier,” were the settlers able to create something expressly American as they moved “into the complexity of city life,” founding a new “individualism, democracy and nationalism (Turner, 199; 225). Turner’s narrative of American expansion is well-illustrated by John Gast in his famous painting American Progress, which depicts Lady Progress bringing forth the light from the East to illuminate the dark, savage, and undiscovered West, guiding settlers who come by stagecoach and train as the Native Peoples retreat, fading out of the scene (Elmore, Sept. 12).

Showing the overwhelming American influence in the shaping of the frontier, this quote captures the general structure of the frontier, at the time, and one can easily bridge the likeness between the absence of the frontier line to the American aspects and dreams. Meaning, America motivates its citizens to spread and lay claim to the land because the American dream is to become successful and in the late 19th century, and before, land possession meant success. Attributing the expansion of the union and the suppressing of the frontier to the railroads and steamboats that allowed citizens to travel far westward, Turner explains that the western frontier no longer exists, and the frontier is scattered with no directionality as the settlements. “By 1880 the settled area had been pushed… and Montana and Idaho were receiving settlers,” (3 Turner). Turner credits the biggest effect of the frontier on American history as a central promotion for democracy, “…here and in Europe,” (6

The romanticization of the American frontier as the space of self making for Americans is predicated upon two premises: one, that Native Americans must be eliminated as they—as in their tribes, with their chiefs, medicine men, and warriors—stand in the way of progress and true civilization with their primitive ways; and two, that self making on the frontier is limited to European Americans. Nothing makes this more clearer than the trajectory of U.S. history leading up to the Wounded Knee