The Frontier--Making of the American Character

In our Digital Civilizations class we recently talked about the American Frontier.  As I was reviewing some of the material, I found some fascinating things that I want to share.  The following are some quotes from Frederick Jackson Turner’s paper entitled, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”.  As I read these I realized that often we view the American “West” as what had to be overcome or colonized.  We watch movies that show the ruggedness and the need for civilization.  However, as we look closer we see that the “West” allowed for development of people.  Even though the way that the “cowboys and Indians” lived lacked some aspects of a cultured civilization, we come to find that it is that lack of strict structure that allowed for the development of a new character—the American Character. 

 “In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization.”

I think that the following quote captures the imagery and force of the Frontier in an amazing way! It shows how the Frontier actually created a new character. 

“The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick, he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the old Europe, not simply the development of Germanic germs, any more than the first phenomenon was a case of reversion to the Germanic mark. The fact is, that here is a new product that is American. 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. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines. And to study this advance, the men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic, and social results of it, is to study the really American part of our history. . . .”