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…
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…
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.
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...
My analysis begins, as it will end, where most cowboy movies begin and end, with the landscape.Western heroes are essentially synedoches for that landscape, and are identifiable by three primary traits: first, they represent one side of an opposition between the supposed purity of the frontier and the degeneracy of the city, and so are separated even alienated from civilization; second, they insist on conducting themselves according to a personal code, to which they stubbornly cling despite all opposition or hardship to themselves or others; and third, they seek to shape their psyches and even their bodies in imitation of the leanness, sparseness, hardness, infinite calm and merciless majesty of the western landscape in which their narratives unfold.All of these three traits are present in the figures of Rob Roy and William Wallace--especially their insistence on conducting themselves according to a purely personal definition of honor--which would seem to suggest that the films built around them and their exploits could be read as transplanted westerns.However, the transplantation is the problem for, while the protagonists of these films want to be figures from a classic western, the landscape with which they are surrounded is so demonstrably not western that it forces their narratives into shapes which in fact resist and finally contradict key heroic tropes of the classic western.
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
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.
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
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.
Historians of the New American West wish to unveil all of the elements that were
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...
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.
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.
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 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.
Perhaps the most significant myth in American culture is that of the American frontier. Its symbolic meaning created such moral, ethical, and emotional values in American that it paved the way for a country that would grow from an East Coast settlement, to a coast-to-coast nation of progress. One of the most famous stories in frontier mythology is that of Paul Bunyan. Although Bunyan’s stories didn’t appear on paper until the early twentieth century, his stories were passed down by word of mouth telling the tale of the “Last of the Frontier Demigods.” “Paul Bunyan was the most famous folk hero of his time, and a symbol of American size, strength, and ingenuity.” He influenced the culture of our country in three ways: in oral folk tales, in popularizations, and in works of art.” Although these traditions are separate from each other, they are closely interwoven. He was the American frontiersman who was mythically responsible for developing the west. He would take his giant axe and clear hundreds of acres a day to make way for civilization on the frontier. By his side was his blue ox, which is said to be responsible for plowing the Grand Canyon and assisting with other western marvels.