The expansion and subsequent closing of the Frontier holds a special place in American history. Thomas Jefferson’s famous Louisiana Purchase made the lands west of the Mississippi a realm of curiosity and possibility for early Americans and the draw was irresistible. As more and more settlers turned west, a movement began to form that would influence American culture and history for generations to come. Spurring this movement forward were Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian, and William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody, a performer and scout, both of whom served to inspire and educate about the allure of the frontier. Turner and Buffalo Bill shared a similar values and iconography in their story-telling that helped build the narrative of the …show more content…
Frontier, but also retained elements of uniqueness in their individual representations, from Turner’s mostly peaceful conquering to Buffalo Bill’s violent conquering—together they gave an idealized conception of the West as a place of “true Americanism” that was adopted by many. Though many would hesitate to relate the two figures, Buffalo Bill and Frederick Turner both played a large part in shaping ideas about the American Frontier.
Turner was an acclaimed historian and many attribute his “frontier thesis” as one of the foremost influences on the development of ideas about American westering. His writings centered around the experiences of the western pioneer, the farmer, the man moving west into the “free land” and building something bigger and better for his children and generations to come. This was, he claimed, true “Americanization”, European settlers came to western lands and conquered them by building homes, raising cattle, growing crops and in doing so shed their past individual histories to become part of a homogenous American identity that was “practical, egalitarian, and democratic” (White). Indians didn’t much factor into Turner’s storytelling, only existing in the periphery of his narrative. The pioneers heading west weren’t fighting off Indians so much as they were conquering the wilderness, tangling with the unpredictability of nature and coming on top in doing so. His writing was praised highly, transcendental in descriptive quality as it made readers (or listeners) feel as if they were part of the experience, at the threshold of the Frontier and moments before taking the first step into the vast unknown. Buffalo Bill served as a scout for the US army before beginning his career as a showman and his fame grew in leaps and bounds as …show more content…
he performed Buffalo Bill’s Wild West across the US. Buffalo Bill’s stories featured stand-offs against Indians, roughriding cowboys, and other feats of heroism popularized in dime novels. Though dramatized, the stories he told and the shows he put on held a key element of truth to them that kept people interested and excited about his works. Many of the accounts of Indian skirmishes were performed by Indians who had been involved in battles, most famously the man credited with defeating Lt. Colonel Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull traveled with Buffalo Bill’s company for a time and actually performed in re-enactments of Custer’s demise adding a sense of realism and giving Buffalo Bill’s performances a certain sense of credibility. His shows, though he never called them as such, told a story of an American frontier rife with adventure and triumph. The white settlers were, by his telling, both conquerors and victims, taking claim to new lands while battling off attacking forces who stood in the way of their seemingly righteous cause. Some key elements link the ideas of these two storytellers.
Turner and Buffalo Bill both showed American westering as a tale of conquest, of either nature or Indians, but triumph in the face of difficult odds nonetheless. They also used similar iconography that was already popular in American culture at the time to draw their audiences in. Covered wagons and log cabins were set pieces in Buffalo Bill’s dramatizations, familiar pieces of American history that resonated with audiences who longed to see the simpler side of life actually come to life. In Turner’s writings, those same covered wagons and log cabins were nostalgic and romantic depictions of the lives westward pioneers were building in the free lands. Through these icons, Turner and Buffalo Bill rooted the value of exploration of new lands and hard work even further into American cultural ideals that they were before. The Frontier was, according to them, the essential American experience and many people agreed. But this American experience could not last forever and both men mourned the closing of the Frontier as a serious loss to American culture and development. For the West, so celebrated for its freedom and wildness, to be contained by the rigid lines of city life was a blow to the development of American culture in their minds. Structured primarily by their own ideas of masculinity, the rougher terrains and hardships of settling land were preferred and the containment and refinement were in a ways emasculating.
The influence of their opinions was such that settlers from Europe that came after the closing of the Frontier struggled to find their place in American culture, because they had not been party to the “Americanizing” experience of westward expansion. The settlers and their children were the true Americans and everyone else was wayside. The storied West comes up regularly in American history. It’s celebrated and lauded as a period of time in which American ideals flourished without limits. In order to truly demonstrate ideas about westward expansion and its effect on American culture, one must turn to the voices of the period, in this case Frederick Turner and Buffalo Bill. Though their modes of storytelling were different—Turner was an essay writer and Buffalo Bill, a performer--both men were highly influential in the development of American identity in regards to American westering, making the journey to and subsequent settlement of the West seem to be an experience that defined being American.
Turner fails to realize the extent to which Native Americans existed in the ‘Wilderness’ of the Americas before the frontier began to advance. Turner’s thesis relies on the idea that “easterners … in moving to the wild unsettled lands of the frontier, shed the trappings of civilization … and by reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativity that the source of American democracy and national character.” (Cronon) While this idea seems like a satisfying theory of why Americans are unique, it relies on the notion that the Frontier was “an area of free land,” which is not the case, undermining the the...
One of the more romantic elements of American folklore has been the criss-crossing rail system of this country – steel rails carrying Americans to new territories across desert and mountain, through wheat fields and over great rivers. Carl Sandburg has flavored the mighty steam engine in elegant prose and Arlo Guthrie has made the roundhouse a sturdy emblem of America’s commerce.
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 knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
According to the thesis of Fredrick Jackson Turner, the frontier changed America. Americans, from the earliest settlement, were always on the frontier, for they were always expanding to the west. It was Manifest Destiny; spreading American culture westward was so apparent and so powerful that it couldn’t be stopped. Turner’s Frontier Theory says that this continuous exposure to the frontier has shaped the American character. The frontier made the American settlers revert back to the primitive, stripping them from their European culture. They then created something brand new; it’s what we know today as the American character. Turner argues that we, as a culture, are a product of the frontier. The uniquely American personality includes such traits as individualism, futuristic, democratic, aggressiveness, inquisitiveness, materialistic, expedite, pragmatic, and optimistic. And perhaps what exemplifies this American personality the most is the story of the Donner Party.
The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson
Turner pointed out several key areas in his thesis that he indicated were absolutes do to the frontier. The first of these was “composite nationality” , which by definition according to Turner’s understanding was, “he (Turner) saw the Native American as a line of savagery…Assimilation could not, according to logic, cope with the presence of the Native American whose customs, were too alien, too different, to become merged into the American self. This implies that the Native American had no other choice than to give in to the demands of the American government or face the consequences if the failed to comply. Hine and Faragher show that the Native American Indian was forced from their homes more than once during the early part of the 19th century because of “manifest destiny”. Those in the United States government who enforced these rules demanded that the country be turned over to the Americans without question because of their supposed superiority over them. David Nichols points out in his article. Civilization Over Savage: Frederick Jackson Turner and The Indian, that Turner’s reference’s the Indians as “public domain” and the disposition of that them by the first frontier. The conclusions that the Native American Indians were nothing more than public domain that needed to be done away with makes me question his bias towards the American Indians as
This historical document, The Frontier as a Place of Conquest and Conflict, focuses on the 19th Century in which a large portion of society faced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Its author, Patricia N. Limerick, describes the differences seen between the group of Anglo Americans and the minority groups of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics Americans and African Americans. It is noted that through this document, Limerick exposes us to the laws and restrictions imposed in addition to the men and women who endured and fought against the oppression in many different ways. Overall, the author, Limerick, exposes the readers to the effects that the growth and over flow of people from the Eastern on to the Western states
To understand Jackson’s book and why it was written, however, one must first fully comprehend the context of the time period it was published in and understand what was being done to and about Native Americans in the 19th century. From the Native American point of view, the frontier, which settlers viewed as an economic opportunity, was nothin...
As history cascades through an hourglass, the changing, developmental hands of time are shrouded throughout American history. This ever-changing hourglass of time is reflected in the process of maturation undertaken by western America in the late nineteenth century. Change, as defined by Oxford’s Dictionary, is “To make or become different through alteration or modification.” The notion of change is essential when attempting to unwind the economic make-up of Kansas in the 1880’s and 1890’s. Popular culture often reveres the American cowboy, which has led him to become the predominate figure in America’s “westering” experience (Savage, p3). However, by 1880 the cowboy had become a mythical figure rather than a presence in western life. The era of the cowboy roaming the Great Plains had past and farmers now sought to become the culturally dominant figure and force in the American West. Unlike the cowboys, farmers were able to evolved, organizing and establishing the Populist Party. The farmers’ newly formed political organization provided them with a voice, which mandated western reform. Furthermore, the populist ideas spread quickly and dominated western thought in the 1880’s and 1890’s. The period of the 1880’s and 1890’s marked the end of the American cowboy and gave farmers a political stronghold that would forever impact the modernization of the West.
When looking at the vast lands of Texas after the Civil War, many different people came to the lands in search for new opportunities and new wealth. Many were lured by the large area that Texas occupied for they wanted to become ranchers and cattle herders, of which there was great need for due to the large population of cows and horses. In this essay there are three different people with three different goals in the adventures on the frontier lands of Texas in its earliest days. Here we have a woman's story as she travels from Austin to Fort Davis as we see the first impressions of West Texas. Secondly, there is a very young African American who is trying his hand at being a horse rancher, which he learned from his father. Lastly we have a Mexican cowboy who tries to fight his way at being a ranch hand of a large ranching outfit.
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 fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
Pioneers set off heading towards the west to escape the challenges they faced in the east. They had an idea of what the west held for them, but none really understood. Newspaper and explorers portrayed the west with endless possibilities. Thousands of men, women and children took a trip heading west to look for a place that held their future. Once there they realized that there was a lot of work in order for them to succeed. The west changed and shaped the people. The hardships made tough and worn humans. In order to survive they had to give up what they knew and the customs that defined them. Clothing, food, and the weather changed. Men worked all day on the farm. Women worked all day taking care of the children. Children did all the chores their parents couldn’t. Work was their life and it formed them into people that were unrecognizable. The evolved to survive and had to make sacrifices, but this doesn’t make them bad people. Within the story A Wagner Matinee by Willa Cather, it portrayed three things about Nebraska and Boston: living conditions, out of place, and isolated.
The cowboys of the frontier have long captured the imagination of the American public. Americans, faced with the reality of an increasingly industrialized society, love the image of a man living out in the wilderness fending for himself against the dangers of the unknown. By the end of the 19th century there were few renegade Indians left in the country and the vast expanse of open land to the west of the Mississippi was rapidly filling with settlers.
The art of the American West has long been honored in the states whose history it records, but it hasn’t always been accepted in the larger art world. Thirty years ago, it was often seen as an out of touch genre, fed by a love of nostalgia and history. Today, it is slowly entering museums across the U.S. and the great works of the American Western artists are being recognized. Charles M. Russell was truly an artist of the American West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the western United States. Of Russell’s paintings, a large number of them depict Indians hunting buffalo. His painting, Spearing A Buffalo, finished in 1925, was one of the last pieces he completed. This piece, for Charles M. Russell, is unique because the theme of the painting is, of course, western and depicts an Indian spearing a buffalo as the main subject. However, the style strays away from what Russell typically does, which is more naturalistic, and demonstrates techniques used in impressionistic works. Spearing A Buffalo was a painting that honored the history of the “wild west” and, at the same time, hooked the larger art world with its new and diverse style of
When analyzed extensivley works of art can be used to reflect different time periods of history. Some works of art that represent the image of the American West in different periods of time are: Thomas Cole’s View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm, commonly referred to as The Oxbow (Painting, 1836), John Gast’s American Progress (Painting, 1872), and Dorothea Lange’s The Road West, New Mexico (Photograph, 1938). Each of these images capture the progress of the settlers journey westward in different periods, and their shifting views of the West as dangerous, tameable and tame.