HST 686 

Lecture 5:
Americans on the Frontier

Through most of its history the United States has had a frontier. That frontier has always had a powerful hold of the American imagination. Stories about life on the frontier have been an important part of American popular culture from the captive narratives, like that of Mary Rowlandson, which you have already sampled, through popular tales of Daniel Boone and the Davy Crockett almanacs of the early 19th century, through the dime novels of the late 19th century, to the “Western” movies and novels of today. This week, we want to look through those popular myths to what life was really like on the frontier. Americans on the frontier lived in unusual conditions, conditions that were in many ways much more stressful than those in the settled regions. where the majority of Americans lived. Once again, we will be examining how people organized their lives in extraordinary situations.

Americans have always thought of themselves as a special people. Puritans settling New England saw themselves as God’s Chosen people doing his “errand in the wilderness” to bring the rest of the world to His ways. Later, many Americans believed that it was the frontier that made them special. This belief was given scholarly respectability in the 1890s with historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis.” Turner argued that American were not just the products of European culture, but something different and that that difference was produced by the frontier experience. Turner intended his thesis to be an explanation of United States history generally, but few historians have accepted it as such. His thesis, however, has been one of the most dominating interpretations in American history. For over a hundred years, it has been the starting point for those historians who have tried to explain the American frontier.

Many historians of the frontier have accepted Turner’s explanation of what happened to Americans on the frontier. Others have challenged specific arguments of Turner, but have done so within the general framework of his argument that the frontier made Americans different. One example of this is the selection by Hines in The Social Fabric, which agrees that the frontier influenced who Americans were, but did not, as Turner argued, push them solely in the direction of individualism. Another challenge to Turner asserts that the frontier was not a place of innovation (where a new “American” was born), but a place of conservatism. Frontiersmen, moving into the unknown, this argument suggests clung more than usual to what was familiar, trying to bring as much as possible of their old lives to the frontier with them and creating there as close copies as they could of the societies they had left.

In the last 20 years, a new group of historians, known as the “New Western historians” has rejected Turner altogether, arguing that Turner’s (and Americans’ in general) concept of “frontier” is irrelevant in explaining the nature of Americans. Their basic point is that the category “frontier” gives a false impression of American history. The concept of frontier implies a meeting place of civilization and savagery (as Turner defines it ) or the existence of wide empty spaces on the other side (Turner also defines the frontier in this way). Neither idea, the New Western historians argue, does justice to the Indian (and Mexican) cultures on the other side. They have also argued that the idea of a “frontier” is a romanticized image that emphasized the heroic deeds of white men, leaving out (or making villains out of) others who played a part in this history. One historian has turned Turner on his head by arguing that the history of the frontier was a history of the “conquest” of other groups (Indians, Mexicans, women, etc,) by white males. In other words, white men become the villains, rather than the heroes of the story.

Others have argued that what distinguishes the times and places in American history that Turner calls the frontier in fact was the extraordinary contact of different ethnic groups (most of them non white). I have included a set of documents on ethnic relations, so you can explore this aspect of frontier history. The most significant and lasting example of this ethnic contact was, of course, the meeting of frontiersmen and Native Americans. But, since you have already dealt with this topic in some detail, I have not included documents on this type of ethnic contact. Information that you recall from Topic 2 would certainly, however, be relevant and useful in dealing with this problem.

In one way or another the first three selections that you read this week have been influenced by the New Western history. You might have already realized, by the fact that I have organized this topic around the concept of “frontier” that I am not a proponent of the New Western history.

You want then this week to come to some conclusions about whether there ever was an American frontier, a meeting place of savagery and civilization or a place on the edge of a vast area of “free land,” and (whether or not this was really a “frontier”) how Americans ordered their lives as they moved West. You will want to use the sources to discover what conditions were for Americans moving West and then come to some conclusions about how those conditions affected the lives of those Americans.

The frontier began with the first English settlements in North America, and these settlers consciously considered themselves to be planting the “frontier” of Europe in America. Once areas of America became well established, Americans began to recognize their own frontier, a place where things were quite different than in the settled regions. At first the “American” frontier was in the western parts of the original colonies, but after the American Revolution, large numbers of Americans began moving across the Appalachian Mountains, first into Kentucky, then into other areas of the Old Northwest and Old Southwest. The area they moved into was familiar, the humid woodlands that Americans had settled since they began colonizing the continent. Near the forefront of this movement, therefore were pioneer farmers, who used familiar skills to clear the woods for farms as they and their parents had done further east. Myths of wild men and violence, of Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Mike Fink, were a part of the American image of this frontier, but always alongside them was the more civilized (and safer) farm family.

The area west of the Mississippi River, which Americans began to settle in the 1820s, was quite different. Most of that area (beyond the first tier of states immediately west of the river) presented a quite different environment than Americans were used to. This had two important consequences. First the early movement by farmers into the region did not follow the previous pattern of moving slightly west of the last area of settlement, but was directed to the only two areas of the region (neither of them easily accessible that were same similar to what they had known: Texas, which was at that time under the control of Spain, and the humid, forested Pacific Coast, which required the tiring, dangerous journey across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. To pioneer farmers, the rest of this vast area seemed worthless. This led to the second consequence of the strange environment of the region: most of it was occupied by other groups of Americans -- fur traders, miners, cattlemen -- for a long time before farmers came into the region. This allowed these groups to develop their own customs and cultures, much different for those that developed on farming frontiers. When, much later, farmers began settling the region (after, for example, they realized that, despite the lack of trees, the Great Plains contained fertile soil that would product profitable crops), they had to adjust not only to an environment much different than they had ever known, but also to cultures and societies already established by these earlier comers.

As stated above, many Americans saw the frontier as the birthplace of the United States; it caught their imaginations as a set of conditions that made Americans who they were and defined what is American. On the other hand, the differences between frontier conditions and those of the settled East also quickly generated conflict. Westerners, often seeing themselves as the “real Americans” resented the control exerted over them by the Eastern establishment. This resentment sometimes led to violent conflict, as in Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, when Western settlers rose up against the established government of the colony of Virginia (and for a brief time replaced it with a government of their own). I’m sure that last semester you ran into the impact of this East-West conflict on the American Revolution. This conflict gave many Easterners a different view of Western settlers than the latter have of themselves. Instead of brave, adventurous heros bringing American civilization into the wilderness, they considered them weak and lawless “savages,” who had fled the order of the East, and who therefore were threats to that order. United States history is full of attempts by Easterners to slow down westward expansion or to control “wild” Westerners. Westerners, of course, deeply resented these attempts by Easterners to control their lives.

Thus, for some Americans the frontier was always a frightening place, not only because of the dangers that existed on it, but also because it threatened the stability of the nation as a whole. But for more Americans the frontier meant something quite different: it meant opportunity. In a very important sense, the frontier kept the dream of America alive. American had always seemed to be the land of opportunity, but as it became settled and distinctions in wealth and status began to appear, opportunity became harder to come by. But, until the end of the 19th century, there was always the frontier, where nothing was yet settled, where opportunity seemed still available for everybody.

Most Americans, therefore, went to the frontier with high expectations. It was the place where they were going to make something of their lives. For many, the opportunity of the frontier was real, and they succeeded, For most, however, the frontier disappointed, a disappointment especially hard to cope with given the high hopes with which they had come. Thus, in addition to the severe conditions on the frontier, many there had to try to come to terms with failure. Many stuck it out and made do with the lives they had established; many others returned to the more comfortable conditions of the East. Some just packed up and moved to another frontier (and a few to another and another).

Because of all the movement to and from frontiers and because frontier settlements tended to be scattered in the “wide open spaces” with only wilderness in between, transportation was a crucial element in the development of the frontier. To succeed by developing resources in new areas often depended on getting there first, putting a premium on effective transportation. And because distances were so great and isolation so common, people on the frontier acutely needed transportation and communication to maintain bonds with the outside world and as a lifeline for the economy of their communities. The sources on the overland trails examine directly this matter of transportation, but other sources also give hints of its importance.

Most American moving West went for personal opportunity, which in most cases meant a better economic standing for them and their families. But Americans also saw in the frontier opportunity for their country: Expansion further and further West would add to the greatness of America. This was especially true in the 1840s, when the ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” of America’s right to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean, greatly accelerated the Westward movement. Almost all Americans, even at the height of Manifest Destiny, went West for their own personal reason, not to strengthen the nation. Most of them, however, considered themselves to be a part of a greater process of spreading America and its blessings (Democracy for example) across the land. Remember from Topic 2 that some Americans justified removing Indians from the land with the argument that the Indians were not using it properly. Bringing American methods to these areas would benefit everyone, especially the Indians. However much they might brag about their wild exploits, almost all frontier people saw themselves as civilizers. They might be there to advance their own fortunes, but in doing so they were also bringing civilization into the wilderness. This idea, too, is an important part of the American definition of themselves as a frontier people.

This brings us back to Turner. However powerful a force he thought the frontier to be, however much he saw it as a different place that created a different people, Turner accepted the American view that the frontier process as at heart a civilizing process. He did so reluctantly, because Turner had a real fondness for frontier society. He nonetheless believed that the end product of the settlement of the frontier was a civilized society much like that that already existed in the East. Turner’s belief in this process is another reason that other historians, especially the New Western Historians (who tend to see little great in American civilization) dislike the Turner thesis. Once again we have a complicated set of historical events that has caused wide disagreement among professional historians. Once again, we must (based on very limited resources) try to make sense of it for ourselves. Good luck