The European Frontier

Author : Frederick Turner
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781539789130
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

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Download or read book The Frontier in American History written by Frederick Turner and published by . This book was released on 2016-10-28 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the settlement of America we have to observe how European life entered the continent, and how America modified and developed that life and reacted on Europe. Our early history is the study of European germs developing in an American environment. Too exclusive attention has been paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins, too little to the American factors. The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. 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. CONTENTS I The Significance of the Frontier in American History II The First Official Frontier of the Massachusetts Bay III The Old West IV The Middle West V The Ohio Valley in American History VI The Significance of the Mississippi Valley in American History VII The Problem of the West VIII Dominant Forces in Western Life IX Contributions of the West to American Democracy X Pioneer Ideals and the State University XI The West and American Ideals XII Social Forces in American History XIII Middle Western Pioneer Democracy