The Frontier is the great American myth. That is not to say that the Frontier is not real, but that it has special meaning in explaining America beyond just the historical facts of what occurred. The nineteenth century is the period most remembered, but the frontier idea stretched back to the first European settlers who encountered a frontier that was the East coast of the United States. How did the culture of the Frontier develop to influence America over a century after it ended?
Fig. 1: Map of the Louisiana Purchase.
American Frontier 1800s
From the arrival of the earliest European settlers, America always had a frontier. To the early settlers, the first towns represented a frontier from Europe, and with the Louisiana purchase in 1803, the new lands represented a frontier from the Eastern United States, which was well settled by then. In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson convinced Congress to fund the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark into these new Western lands to explore and report back what they found. They travelled all the way to the Pacific Ocean, bringing back maps, descriptions of animals and plants encountered, and peaceful first contacts with many Indigenous tribes. With this information, Americans would head west towards the Pacific Ocean and settle the frontier.
Frontier: The US government defined the frontier as an area having a population of fewer than two residents per square mile
Fig.2 - Lewis and Clark
American Frontier Timeline
During the 19th century, settlers moved west across the American continent. It was at the end of that century, in 1882, that the patriotic song "America the Beautiful" was written by Katherine Lee Bates and Samuel A. Ward. The song lyrics mention "from sea to shining sea", meaning the distance from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific that the nation covers. This is the timeline of important events as settlers crossed that distance, learning what lay between sea and shinning sea.
- 1803 - Louisiana Purchase
- 1805 - Lewis and Clark Expedition
- 1843 - Oregon Trail and California Trail
- 1845 - Texas becomes a state
- 1847 - Settling of Utah
- 1848 - California Goldrush
- 1850 - California becomes a state
- 1859 - Oregon becomes a state
- 1862 - Homestead Act
- 1862 - Pacific Railroad Acts
- 1889 - North Dakota and South Dakota become states
- 1890 - Frontier is fully settled
Fig. 3: Oregon Trail Reenactment
The Frontier in American History
The earliest people at the forefront of westward movement were hunters and trappers, selling furs to the East and Europe. By the 1840s their trade was ending as Americans journeyed on the Oregon Trail in search of farmland and towards the California Gold Rush in hopes of striking it rich. The US government would debate how much direct involvement to have in western settlement, eventually settling on the Homestead Act in 1862. At the end of the Civil War in 1865, the era popularly known as the "Wild West" began and lasted through the end of the frontier in 1890.
1840s
Getting wagons loaded with supplies across the still natural landscape of the United States was extremely difficult. By the early 1840s, trails for wagon train trains were beginning to be cut for destinations such as Oregon and California. Between 1848 and 1855, many single, transient men known as "Forty-niners" travelled to California hoping to discover gold in the California Gold Rush. Although the early temporary settlements they developed were rough, the wealth discovered led to the development of California. Whether setting up a homestead to farm or seeking gold, the new trails aided in the still difficult journey West.
Many who travelled on the new trails succumbed to disease, the elements, animal attacks, or violent conflicts with indigenous peoples.
1860s
In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act, which would eventually give 1.6 million people 10% of the land in the US for only a small fee and the agreement to live on it for at least five years. Also in 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Acts, which made travel West much easier. After the Civil War ended in 1865, many Americans and recent immigrants from Europe went West. The process was easier than ever thanks to the new railroads easing the previously dangerous journey and the Homestead Act making acquiring the land easy.
In addition to the Homestead Act, many advertisements of the era promoted the great life to be had out West.
1890
By 1890, the frontier was over. The West was settled with urban areas and connected through rail and post. Many Western territories were now officially states in the Union, and the rest would soon follow. From this point, the frontier would grow into the mythic history of America.
Fig. 4: Art Symbolizing Manifest Destiny
American Frontier Culture Summary
Major elements of the American culture would develop from the frontier experience. Individualism, democracy, and religion were all core elements of the American idea that the West helped to shape. Without the conservative establishment back East, new ideas were free to develop among the self-reliant settlers.
Individualism
No other element has been so identified with the American spirit as individualism. From the first trappers, to small family farms, to the gold hunters, most headed West as single people or single family units to make it in a new area. Government control of these areas was sometimes minimal, with rampant lawlessness and conflicts with indigenous groups. Many chased a dream of social mobility through hard work into the often uncertain conditions of the frontier.
Democracy
The emphasis on the individual and the degree of social mobility afforded on the frontier dissolved some more conservative notions of class difference in frontier regions. Despite the focus on the individual, crime and indigenous conflicts brought the small frontier populations together to deal with issues. This coming together was reinforced by the unique shared experiences of frontier life, that united native born Americans with immigrants in ways that culturally segregated neighborhoods of the urban East did not. Social mobility combined with the struggle to survive to increase democracy and respect for individual voices, even for immigrants and landless White Americans.
Increased suffrage in the 1828 election brought Andrew Jackson to the presidency, a man who had been born in an area of the Carolinas that was at the time on the frontier.
The Second Great Awakening
Out west, the Second Great Awakening occurred. With the mainline churches largely absent from the American West, new religious movements were able to find great success proselytizing their ideas. Traveling preachers hosted revival meetings, where they energized converts to their faith. During this period many uniquely American religions appeared, such as Mormonism and Adventism.
The Second Great Awakening inspired many abolitionists, who often viewed human enslavement as evil in religious terms.
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was a loose philosophy that combined the individualism, democracy, and religion of America to support westward expansion. The American people and culture were viewed as exceptional and that it was the destiny and duty of Americans to expand West. This often involved vaguely religious ideas that the destiny came directly from God. The consequences for indigenous peoples were harsh and resulted in their removal from ancestral lands to make way for White settlers. Some prominent American leaders such as Andrew Jackson subscribed to the ideas, but others like Abraham Lincoln were in opposition.
Fig.5 - Pop Culture Image of the Frontier from the TV Series Wild, Wild West
The Significance of the Frontier in American History
In the 1890s, with the frontier now in the rearview, it became the creation story of the United States. Historian Frank Jackson Turner created the Frontier Hypothesis, which explained the history of the United States in terms of the frontier. With the frontier now closed, many looked for new frontiers from foreign expansion to metaphorical frontiers like conquering social or technological problems.
The Frontier in Popular Culture
Already by the mid-nineteenth century, fictional tales exaggerating the gun fights and excitement of the "Wild West" were beginning to appear as entertainment. By the twentieth century, Westerns were a popular genre of fiction from novels to radio shows, to films. In reality, while gunfights did occur, they were not as common as in fiction and the lives of cowboys, mostly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous, were simply hard pastoral existences. Other elements of fiction such as general lawlessness, gambling, and prostitution were closer to the truth of the frontier.
Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter was the first Western novel in 1859.
American Frontier Culture - Key takeaways
- Lasted from the first European settler until 1890.
Defined as an area with less than two people per square mile.
Fostered individualism as single men or single families moved West.
Struggles to survive and social mobility created a unique American culture and led to increased democracy.
Lack of established churches gave rise to new religious ideas in revival meetings.
Influenced American culture long after the frontier closed, as Americans looked for new frontiers and new types of frontiers.
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