Frederick Jackson Turner The Great West Essay

There is great debate on Frederick Jackson Turners thesis on whether or not the great west is where American character was formed. The West was more a form of society than an actual area. The term is applied to the region in which the social conditions resulted from the application of older set colonies. By this application a new environment was entered. A new environment of freedom and of opportunity was opened and a new line of activities, ideas, customs, and growth were brought into existence in the Great west. Their opportunistic, individualistic, and willingness to accept innovations are of reasons I agree with Turners analysis that true American character was formed in the great west. Being stripped from industrialization and modes of travel to being arrayed in "the hunting shirt and moccasins"(Turner, 167) and "put into

Because coming to the West meant new opportunities for these people, it meant picking up everything they could take and moving. What this was, was continual rebirth that Americans had to deal with. With continuing to rebirth, a person becomes different as in there is a sense of finding themselves a sense of individualism. In other words a sense of what is now American character. "Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American." (Turner, 166 ) Turner writes "In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated and fused into a mixed race." The west being a unique place as Turner states, it also has its own national identity and is not sectional but rather it is like a melting pot where these immigrants were "Americanized". This is shown in Frank Marryat's primary source of drawing in "A San Francisco Saloon" (Marryat, 182) in which it shows the diversity of the West. Depicted in Marryat's drawing are Chinese, Spanish, and white male gold miners, as well as some dressed in top hats in a gambling