“Home on the Range,” the state song of Kansas and the musical embodiment of the American West. With its original composition dated in the early 1870’s and continued popularity around campfires today, this song offers listeners a chance to remember the true West – a land “where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play… and the skies are not cloudy all day.” This song describes a beautiful, open frontier where humanity admires nature and the two live in harmony with one another. An area full of wild animals and natural landscapes alongside cowboys and farmers. With this song in mind, people of the past and present may envision wilderness alongside tranquility, a place characterized by its mutually beneficial relationship with the land. Although many envision the 19th century American frontier as an open land full of forests, plains, buffalo, cowboys, and Indians, the actual American frontier was a large industrial system – blinded by capital – that relied on the exploitation of the natural world, technology to transform this nature into capital, and trains to link together this vast industrial frontier. As Dr. Higley wrote the poem that became “Home on the Range,” the American industrial frontier simultaneously began to render the roaming buffalo extinct. At the same time, Americans depleted and exploited other native animals and natural lands, turning nature into capital and paving the way for the American industrial frontier. The depletion of America’s
Frontiersmen have existed throughout America’s history. According to Turner’s hypothesis, they push forwards for civilization and have shaped America. The stories All the Pretty Horses, The Gift of Cochise, and The Martian are all works of frontier literature. Each in their own way show frontiersmen during different times in America’s history with characters that interact with their respective frontiers in different ways. Through these three books one can see how the core interactions between frontiersmen and the frontiers call out the qualities of frontiersmen stated in Turner’s frontier hypothesis.
The millions of American Bison thriving in the Great Plains were exterminated in under two decades. Five main factors contributed to this massive eradication. These factors are: technology, economics, demographics, changing boundaries and the role of government. Each of these led to the slaughter of the bison in the Great Plains and each work together in a very simple order. The most important factor that led to the extermination of the bison on the Great Plains was the role of government. It was the factor that preceded all of the other factors. If the government had not gotten the territory or enforced laws in the land to combat the killing of the bison, there would not have been such a depopulation of the bison. Each of the factors led directly and indirectly to the extermination of the American Bison which all started with the government’s role - both having land for the citizens to settle and kill bison and the government’s indifference to the killing of the
Faragher, John Mack. Re-reading Frederick Jackson Turner: “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
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
The buffalo were evidently everything to the Native Americans, hereby causing the defeat of buffalo to fall hand in hand with theirs. The plains Indians used bison as not only food, but in religious rituals, for clothing, for hunting, for shelter, and more. The buffalo were an integral part of the native’s lives. In the aftermath of the increasing killings of bison, the lives of countless Native Americans were destroyed. The said 30-60 million buffalo which had roamed freely upon the Great
The Frontier Thesis may play a heavy part in U.S. history, but there are implications for truly understanding the outlines of this thesis. Fredrick Jackson Tuner during a great meeting of American Historical Association on July 12th, 1893 in Chicago, a paper named “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” This paper introduced an innovative way of astonishment to understanding the construction of America. Turner envisioned that the history of America was not focused one the prominence of the Frontier and the America established many trades and accomplishments from this voyage. Such as Tuner laid out the foundation of his thesis, he also didn’t account for the flaws that were overlooked from his discernment of the Frontier. (Tuner, pg. 1-9)
Restoration of the Bison is something that has been going on for the past two decades. As a matter of fact, several Native American tribes have come together to form the Inter Tribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC) which has been set out to bring bison back onto the American plains in the midwest. Bison have an intimate relationship in the traditions and rituals of Native Americans. The importance of bison within the culture has made bringing back the bison an important issue in the preservation of wildlife. However, some of the arguments made by the ITBC show that the bison's economic value should be the main factor why they should be brought back. Yet others involved in this cause suggest that buffalo restoration
Berry’s mention of the farmer and an understanding of his farm is a constant theme in this essay. Agriculture, a distribution of products born from the earth and its entrance into our bodies as nourishment, describes an interdependence. The development of highways, industry, and daily routine of work and obligation, has caused a romanticization of wilderness. High mountain tops and deep forests are sold as “scenic.” Berry reminds the reader that wilderness had once bred communities and civilization, and that by direct use of the land, we are taught to respect and surrender to it. But by invention of skyscrapers, airplanes, we are able to sit higher than these mountain tops and this is his first representation of disconnect from Creation. Mechanical invention leads one to parallel themselves with godliness, magnifying self worth and a sense of significance. What is misunderstood is that through this magnification, because there is no control or limit, we “raise higher the cloud of megadeath.” Our significance is not proved by the weight of our material wealth, rather
In 1893, at the 400th anniversary of the appearance of Columbus in the Americas celebrated in Chicago , Frederick Jackson Turner presented an academic paper entitled, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” In this essay, Turner proposes that, “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.” The group dynamic that Turner champions is the farmer. More directly it is white, male farmers. While the expansion of the west by white male farmers was a factor in the development of America, it is not the only explanation for this progression. Turner fails to incorporate all of the demographics present during this expansion which were essential to the evolution of America.
The author utilizes words such as “flyover region that one must endure,” “easy inclines,” “square states”, and “farmable plains.” Marquart’s description characterizes the landscape as plain and dull. At the same time her diction recapitulates a landscape which is calm and serene. The upper Midwest has “easy inclines” and “farmable plains.” It is a place that is eye-catching to those who are farming, like her grandparents, who received an portion of land.
It is also this depressing lost of Native Americans’ culture that has motivated them to never stop trying to return home. However, in the memory of the speaker’s dad, these Native Americans were just “swollen bellies of salmon coming back to a river that wasn’t there” (CR 123). Salmon have the nature of returning back to the place, where they were born in, to reproduce. Comparing the Native Americans to salmon, the author identifies the importance of their land to their nature. That is, losing the land is the same as losing their reproduction. Therefore, taking the land away for the modern developments, the western culture has ultimately become the nightmare for the Native Americans.
Kansas has many state parks and the popular place is the monument rocks and the castle rocks. The monument rocks and the castle rocks have fossils in ancient chalks in plain western Kansas which is a spectacular landmark. The chalk was deposited during the Cretaceous period of geological history about 80 million years ago, when the central interior was covered by sea. The fossils were like shark teeth, fish bones, even dinosaur bones, and other sea creatures. The fossils in the chalk bed go to the Sternberg Museum in Hays.Michael J. Everhart is a shark hunter and he found a shark skull which was under sand and gravel The chalk was a good material for trapping and preserving
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in
Preamble: As students of the West Delaware school district we expect to be given engaging content to learn about. We, quite frankly, are not. So, we demand engaging content, specifically Hamilton. We demand that ‘Hamilton, an American Musical’ be fully included in the curriculum of English III. It is already included partially, but we demand the full musical be included.
Walter Coppinger, a Professor of Geosciences at Trinity College in San Antonio and long-time observer of Montana geology, was the first person to describe to me the many problems of the western rangelands that have developed out of the over-grazing of cattle. From a hilltop among the upland slopes of Whitehall, Montana, he pointed out a few patches of bare earth on the horizon and some gullying out of trails across the rangelands in the distance. Rangelands are areas of land on which livestock are left to roam and graze. Traditionally the great plains and rolling hills of the Western States have