In 1893 when Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his famous essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” the United States had recently fulfilled the goal of Manifest Destiny by finishing its conquest of the West. Westward expansion had been an integral aspect of the American identity and its citizens were left wondering what would continue to propel the United States into the future. At the same time, people were also looking back and trying to decide how exactly the frontier had shaped American life. The common belief was that the United States’ conquest of the West was glorious and peaceful and Turner’s essay serves as a perfect example of this line of thinking. For Turner and his ilk, the West was an uninhabited area that was free for the taking. By taking this land, the settlers created the American identity – an identity that stood for rugged individualism and strength. While the West certainly helped shape America, this view often overlooked the brutal nature of America’s march to the West. Turner’s influential essay only helped to cement the myth of benevolent Western settlement into American history. In his second paragraph, Turner makes an important claim that is the guiding idea throughout the rest of the essay. He claims that when “the nation has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a different phenomenon.” When other nations conquer people and places, the conquerors are forced to assimilate those new places into their existing society. The American tradition is different, however, because the United States did not have to conquer anything. The West was empty, which allowed Americans to settle the territory free from... ... middle of paper ... ...ed on Westward expansion, then it is none too appealing to realize that Westward expansion meant the brutal conquest of the native population. To come to grips with this reality, Native Americans were pushed out the conscious of Americans. Westward expansion is much more palpable if the West is viewed as free, open land that was ripe for the taking – as described in Turner’s thesis. When Americans were finally confronted with the fact that Native Americans had occupied the land, the Natives were depicted as brutes that were not capable of correctly taking care of the land. Overtime, however, historians have been able to modify Turner’s thesis into a more balanced argument. Turner’s thesis, however, remains important due to the fact that it is such a clear representation of American attitudes about the frontier and Westward expansion at the turn of the century.
America’s Manifest Destiny first surfaced around the 1840’s, when John O’Sullivan first titled the ideals that America had recently gained on claiming the West as their ‘Manifest Destiny.’ Americans wanted to settle in the West for multiple reasons, from the idea that God wanted them to settle all the way to the West co...
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.
In Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, he talked about how he thought the West was where true American character was formed and that the West was the birthplace of democracy. However, in my perspective I don’t only feel that Turner was inaccurate in his analysis, but also very racist and selfish. I believe that Turner wanted to justify why taking over the West would be so necessary and beneficial to Americans. He stated several things in his essay that were obviously undermined by many primary sources in Hollitz’s book. At the time Americans took on the ideology of Manifest Destiny, which basically was the belief that Americans were destined to expand from coast to coast in North America despite the fact that there was people already occupying land on
The Frontier Thesis has been very influential in people’s understanding of American values, government and culture until fairly recently. Frederick Jackson Turner outlines the frontier thesis in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. He argues that expansion of society at the frontier is what explains America’s individuality and ruggedness. Furthermore, he argues that the communitarian values experienced on the frontier carry over to America’s unique perspective on democracy. This idea has been pervasive in studies of American History until fairly recently when it has come under scrutiny for numerous reasons. In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, William Cronon argues that many scholars, Turner included, fall victim to the false notion that a pristine, untouched wilderness existed before European intervention. Turner’s argument does indeed rely on the idea of pristine wilderness, especially because he fails to notice the serious impact that Native Americans had on the landscape of the Americas before Europeans set foot in America.
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” .
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
However, it is relevant that we understand the ripple effect that Turner’s thesis had on the world. Soon to be President had already written three of the fourteen four volumes of Winning the West, prior to reading the pamphlet. The concern I see that effects our society is that Turner was able through a speech able to not on influence but encourage Roosevelt to continue to write more in regards to Winning the Race in the West. The impact of Turner’s ideas and Roosevelt’s rise to presidency are a great indication of how significant the thesis was through the “frontiers” which included the Chinese Boxer Rebellion and the Philippine-American War. During both of these engagements, American soldiers were accused and found guilty of brutally beating, killing and even raping women and men in both regions. The tolerance of “manifest destiny” was still alive and well as Roosevelt then Governor of the Philippines would soon take over as President of the United States in 1904. Although this was a negative impact, this is still significant to our history even
In a lively account filled that is with personal accounts and the voices of people that were in the past left out of the historical armament, Ronald Takaki proffers us a new perspective of America’s envisioned past. Mr. Takaki confronts and disputes the Anglo-centric historical point of view. This dispute and confrontation is started in the within the seventeenth-century arrival of the colonists from England as witnessed by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia and the Wamapanoag Indians from the Massachusetts area. From there, Mr. Takaki turns our attention to several different cultures and how they had been affected by North America. The English colonists had brought the African people with force to the Atlantic coasts of America. The Irish women that sought to facilitate their need to work in factory settings and maids for our towns. The Chinese who migrated with ideas of a golden mountain and the Japanese who came and labored in the cane fields of Hawaii and on the farms of California. The Jewish people that fled from shtetls of Russia and created new urban communities here. The Latinos who crossed the border had come in search of the mythic and fabulous life El Norte.
The West: From Lewis and Clark and Wounded Knee: The Turbulent Story of the Settling of Frontier America.
Westward movement is the populating of lands, by the Europeans, in what is now known as the United States. The chief resolution of the westward expansion is economic betterment. The United States story begins with westward expansion and even before the Revolutionary war, early settlers were migrating westward into what is now known as the states of Kentucky,Tennessee, parts of the Ohio Valley and the South. Westward Expansion was slowed down by the French and the Native Americans, however the Louisiana Purchase significantly improved the expansion efforts. Westward expansion was enabled because of wars, the displacement of Native American Indians, buying land, and treaties. This paper will discuss the effects of westward expansion on domestic politics and on American relations with other nations.
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.
From long before the arrival of white Europeans to modern day society, what can currently be defined as the Western United States has been a subject of constant fluidity of definition and curious, encroaching onlookers. Consisting of a substantial chunk of the United States, the west is a large part of the history and identity of the country. Due to its importance in both forming what became the United States as it is known today and maintaining the balance of and participating in modern day government, understanding the history and development of the west is crucial. The text The American West by Stephen Aron dives into this history head on, providing a detailed yet brief explanation of the west from pre-European settlement to modern day.
Many of Turner's arguments, however, exhibit serious shortcomings when they are examined more closely. One of the most critical is his failure to take account of the First Nations as a major player in colonial history and instead reducing their role to that of mere resistance to English settlement. He also brushes aside the importance of the fur trade, even though it was a catalyst for intense commercial rivalry for the New England colonies, New France, and the Indians themselves. Finally, Turner's characterization of the frontier as a purely western and English phenomenon completely ignores the frontier faced by the French colonists on their western and southern borders, as well as the northern frontier of English colonies like New York and Massachusetts. At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. As successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics.
Native American’s place in United States history is not as simple as the story of innocent peace loving people forced off their lands by racist white Americans in a never-ending quest to quench their thirst for more land. Accordingly, attempts to simplify the indigenous experience to nothing more than victims of white aggression during the colonial period, and beyond, does an injustice to Native American history. As a result, historians hoping to shed light on the true history of native people during this period have brought new perceptive to the role Indians played in their own history. Consequently, the theme of power and whom controlled it over the course of Native American/European contact is being presented in new ways. Examining the evolving
In Thomas King’s novel, The Inconvenient Indian, the story of North America’s history is discussed from his original viewpoint and perspective. In his first chapter, “Forgetting Columbus,” he voices his opinion about how he feel towards the way white people have told America’s history and portraying it as an adventurous tale of triumph, strength and freedom. King hunts down the evidence needed to reveal more facts on the controversial relationship between the whites and natives and how it has affected the culture of Americans. Mainly untangling the confusion between the idea of Native Americans being savages and whites constantly reigning in glory. He exposes the truth about how Native Americans were treated and how their actual stories were