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From the prologue through chapter one in “Wilderness and the American Mind”, the author emphasizes the affect wilderness had on the Europeans during the colonization of America. In today’s society, we are familiar with the concept of wilderness but few of us have experienced the feeling of being encapsulated in the unfamiliar territory. Today we long for wilderness, crave it even. We use it as an outlet to escape the pace of life. However, we have a sense of safety that the Europeans did not. We are not isolated in the unfamiliar, help is usually a phone call away. Though we now view the wilderness as an oasis because we enter at our own terms, in the early colonial and national periods, the wilderness was an unknown environment that was viewed as evil and dangerous.
When the Europeans traveled to the New World, they expected the wilderness to resemble the Garden of Eden. The reality was a rude awakening. They found the vast lands of the new world to be full of uncultivated
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The Europeans lived nomadic lifestyles centered on sheer will to survive. Conquering the wild was dependent on simply finding food and shelter. Men were no longer controlled by civilization and had a sense of confusion when faced with the environment. “In addition civilized men faced the danger of succumbing to the wilderness of his surroundings and reverting to savagery himself” (Nash, 2014, p. 24). It was not until around ten thousand years ago when man began to realize that they were essentially at the top of the food chain and could control their environment to an extent instead of their environment controlling them. At this time, they began to settle into an agriculture society. Nash (2014) stated, “For the first time humans understood themselves to be distinct from and, they reasoned, better than the rest of nature” (p. xx) Control was an important concept when achieving
Cronon, William “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90
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” .
Because of westward expansion, America gained a significant amount of fertile land which contributed to the nation 's’ agrarian identity. The wilderness and landscape
Any discussion of the American culture and its development has to include mythology, because that is where most of the information about early America is found. Mythology is a unique source in that it gives a shared understanding that people have with regard to some aspect of their world. The most important experience for American frontiersmen is the challenge to the “myth of the frontier” that they believed in – “the conception of America as a wide-open land of unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious, self-reliant individual to thrust his way to the top.” (Slotkin, 5) In particular, the challenge came from Indians and from the wilderness that they inhabited.
Franklin, Benjamin “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. A. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 476-80. Print
The concept of preservation of wilderness emerged in the United States in the nineteenth century as a response to the large-scale disposal of public lands then taking place and to such economic activities as mining and logging, which had altered much of the western landscape…John Muir, who is usually cited as the first American preservationist, condemned the common perception of wilderness as an economic resource
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.
In Wallace Stegner’s “Wilderness Letter,” he is arguing that the countries wilderness and forests need to be saved. For a person to become whole, Stegner argues that the mere idea of the wild and the forests are to thank. The wilderness needs to be saved for the sake of the idea. He insinuates that anyone in America can just think of Old faithful, Mt. Rainier, or any other spectacular landform, even if they have not visited there, and brought to a calm. These thoughts he argues are what makes us as people whole.
In Our savage neighbors written by Peter Silver, violence and terror characterized the relationship between the Indians and the Pennsylvanian colonists. The conspectus of Silver’s book resides on the notion that fear was the prime motivator that led to the rebirth
1. In all three of our readings, the Western landscape has been described as a dangerous obstacle to overcome: in Bret Harte’s “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and Hamlin Garland’s “Under the Lion’s Paw,” the land threatens the character’s lives, while in Zane Grey’s “The Ranger,” Vaughn must seriously consider the terrain and his horse’s abilities as he first tries to catch up to Quinela’s people and later works to escape them. Clearly, nature was a hostile force for Western people. This constant hostility would contribute to the determination, independence, and strength associated with the Western character.
Born in Home, Pennsylvania in 1927, Abbey worked as a forest ranger and fire look-out for the National Forest Service after graduating from the University of New Mexico. An author of numerous essays and novels, he died in 1989 leaving behind a legacy of popular environmental literature. His credibility as a forest ranger, fire look- out, and graduate of the University of New Mexico lend credibility to his knowledge of America’s wilderness and deserts. Readers develop the sense that Abbey has invested both time and emotion in the vast deserts of America.
Wilderness politics form the basement in American environmental history which articulates attention and simplifies stories of our understanding on the vital issue of conserving nature from crucial development of urbanization and commercialism. This usually portrays the conflict over the management or use of resources emerging in the progressive-era conservation movement of those interested only in aesthetic nature where wilderness as a movement is misunderstood. Paul S. Sutter has done much to correct these misinterpretations and misperceptions. He has achieved this through his study of the four founders of Wilderness Society referring to Aldo Leopold, Sterling Yard, Benton MacKaye and Bob Marshall. He therefore presents a persuasive complex
"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.
... middle of paper ... ... This conflict conveys the confrontation of wild American nature with the new-coming European civilization, people like the young hunter?had no qualms about doing harm to nature by thrusting civilization upon it? P. Miller, p. 207.
Wilderness as defined by The Wilderness Act is, “… an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” and "an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions” (Wilderness.net, 1964). Lyndon B. Johnson said on September 3rd, 1964, “…The two bills that I am signing this morning are in the highest tradition of our heritage, as conservators as well as users of America’s bountiful natural endowments. The Wilderness Bill preserves by posterity, for all time to come, 9 million acres of this vast continent and their original and unchanging beauty and wonder” (Johnson, 1964). When Congress and the President, Lyndon