The myth of the American West has been told many different ways throughout history. Perhaps, the most common way it has been told is, as a romantic story about Indians and Cowboys, a legacy that has imbedded its roots into the American culture and society. Frederick Jackson Turner has a naturalistic view of the West; he believes that westward expansion brings amazing and endless opportunity. He believed that the frontier was the defining element of American culture because it reinforced the sense of individualism and self-reliance on Americans while creating the resources that accompanied the frontier's settlement that led to the beginning of our economic success. However, Turner’s view was challenged by Historians that are seeking to expose …show more content…
The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development” (Turner chp. 1). Turner wrote that frontiers settlers continued their trek West, during the late nineteenth century and homesteaders wanted to establish themselves and make a new life in the West. He believed that the frontier is the line of most effective Americanization and he acknowledged that “ the most important effect of the frontier has been in the promotion of democracy here and in Europe. As has been indicated, the frontier is productive of individualism” (Turner chp. 1). He moves on to say, “The peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people--to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life” (Turner chp. …show more content…
This was established as a “return to primitive conditions” because of how the lands were so undeveloped and populated with Natives. Therefore, Turner asserts that, “American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier” (Turner chp. 1). However this observation and argument is inconsistent because he assumed that the Natives were understood to be cruel and have no value in civilization. Turner’s view examines the industries that inhabit the West. The industries that relocated West in order to follow Turner’s view were the miners, farmers, fur-traders, and cattle raisers because in his theory it had indicated the idea of involving the cycle of redevelopment for new eras. He wrote that for every new area of land that is settled, the land is won at the cost of the natives and because of this the civilized required and forced the natives to adjust from their lands in favor of Americans. Then, the United States brought railroads, towns, the telegraph, and resource extraction, the herding of cattle, and agribusiness to the West. The frontier was fluid and the edge of civilization as defined in the period. The idea of taming the Wild West was widespread and the westward expansion and Manifest Destiny shaped American ideas and policies
The West is a very big part of American culture, and while the myth of the West is much more enticing than the reality of the west, it is no doubt a very big part of America. We’re constantly growing up playing games surrounded by the West such as cowboys and Indians and we’re watching movies that depict the cowboy to be a romanticized hero who constantly saves dames in saloons and rides off into the sunset. However, the characters of the West weren’t the only things that helped the development of America; many inventions were a part of the development of the West and helped it flourish into a thriving community. Barbed wire, the McCormick reaper and railroads—for example—were a large part of the development in the West—from helping to define claimed land boundaries, agricultural development and competition, and even growth of the West.
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...
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.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
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.
"Chapter 2 Western Settlement and the Frontier." Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays. Ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. 3rd ed. Vol. II: Since 1865. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 37-68. Print.
Turner’s essay is motivated essentially by the fact that the frontier is disappearing. The 1890 Census explicitly states that “Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line….[the frontier’s extent] can not therefore have a place in the census reports”. Turner’s essay is sparked by this statement because he does not want the frontier to disappear, since he believes that the frontier has given so much to the American culture and contributed so much to American history, and he believes
The significance of Frontier in American History is a thesis paper that was written and delivered by Jackson Turner on 12th July 1893. Turner delivered this paper during a yearly meeting of the fledging American Historical Association that was being held at Chicago. I believe this paper had a lot of impact on the study of American History specifically in colleges and universities. The original paper was informed from twelve sources. Turner wrote this paper and formed the frontier theory following the work of Achille Loria- An Italian economist- who proposed that the key to changes in human society was free land and that America would be the best place to research on this proposal. The other event that precipitated Turners paper was the announcement of superintendent in 1890 census which claimed that there is insufficient free land in US to allow frontier to feature in the census report as had been previously done until 1790 (Turnver, 3).
America was expanding at such a rapid pace that those who were in America before us had no time to anticipate what was happening. This change in lifestyle affected not only Americans but everyone who lived in the land. Changing traditions, the get rich quick idea and other things were the leading causes of westward expansion. But whatever happened to those who were caught in the middle, those who were here before us?
...or wider opportunities. Even the safety valve theory has an element of truth when applied to ambitious young men of the professional class who had a better chance of making it big much quicker in the West than in the East. Without the open frontier, moreover, there would have been a much larger migration of young people from the farms to the cities; thus the frontier helped indirectly to check the exploitation of the working class by preventing it from expanding too rapidly. The Westward Expansion also weakened state and regional loyalties and promoted national unity due to its inherent mobility. Most westerners thought of themselves primarily as Americans, and wanted strong national government with broad powers for developing transportation and promoting the general welfare. The most significant feature of the Westward Expansion was that the pioneers took with them the essential institutions of their civilization. Thus we must look upon the Westward Expansion as one of the factors in the shaping of the American civilization but not the only one. AKSHARA PRADHAN Roll No. 385 Tute. Grp.- Tuesday, 1st Pd.
“By 1840 almost 7 million Americans had migrated westward in hopes of securing land and being prosperous” (Westward Expansion Facts. Westward Expansion Facts. N.p., n.d Web. 16 Sept. 2016). This movement is called Western Expansion. The movement brought new beginnings and hope to many northerners and southerners. Western expansion not only affected the lives of many Americans, but the Natives living on the land. Throughout the 1860s to 1890s, the movement West altered the lives of Native Americans forever. Settlers deconstructed the Native Americans land in the mindset to grow their economy. Americans attacked and killed large amounts of Natives for no reasonable reason. Also, in hopes to Americanize the natives, they taught and imposed their
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.
The western frontier is full of many experiences that changed the frontier. Each significant event has an important role on the shaping of society and way it influenced a new nation. Each author brought a new perspective and thought process to the western experience which either contradicted Turner or supported his theories. The frontier ideas that interested me include topics such as trading frontier, farming frontier, nationality and government, and the neglecting of women.
At first, we were a nation of immigrants that prospered in a way that people have never seen. America is known as the land of opportunity, we have innovativeness, and when you really work hard you can definitely make a change for yourself. Turner coins American development by the westward movement. Moving west, and tapping the resources given to us is what made us different. Turner’s thesis is, “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain[s] American development. The idea that success came from moving west. This idea wraps up how America became the nation to be.