The Frontier (North American history)
The cowboy, the quintessential symbol of the American frontier, circa 1887
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Currently the United States, historically in order of their assimilation: |
Currently the United States, historically in order of their assimilation:
The American Frontier comprises the geography, history, folklore, and cultural expression of life in the forward wave of American expansion that began with English colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last mainland territories as states in 1912. "Frontier" refers to a contrasting region at the edge of a European-American line of settlement. American historians cover multiple frontiers but the folklore is focused primarily on the so-called "conquest" and settlement of the lands west of the Mississippi River, in what is now the Midwest, Texas, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest, and the West Coast.
This era of massive migration and settlement was particularly encouraged by the Colonial and early United States government following the Louisiana Purchase, and coined the term and political philosophy, "Manifest Destiny".
Enormous popular attention in the 19th and early 20th century media focused on the Western United States in the second half of the 19th century, a period sometimes called the Old West, or the Wild West, the theme of which frequently exaggerated the romance, anarchy, and chaotic violence of the period for greater dramatic effect. This eventually inspired the Western genre of film and comic books, as well as the more general theme of "Cowboys and Indians"—though the latter term is now considered outdated and derogatory.
As defined by Hine and Faragher, "frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of the land, the development of markets, and the formation of states." They explain, "It is a tale of conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, and the merging of peoples and cultures that gave birth and continuing life to America." Through treaties with foreign nations and native tribes; political compromise; military conquest; establishment of law and order; the building of farms, ranches, and towns; the marking of trails and digging of mines; and the pulling in of great migrations of foreigners, the United States expanded from coast to coast, fulfilling the dreams of Manifest Destiny. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his "Frontier Thesis" (1893) theorized that the frontier was a process that transformed Europeans into a new people, the Americans, whose values focused on equality, democracy, and optimism, as well as individualism, self-reliance, and even violence. Thus, Turner's Frontier Thesis proclaimed the westward frontier as the defining process of American history.
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