The Significance of the Frontier in American History

A detailed Summary of The Significance of the Frontier in American History

Frederick Jackson Turner's text "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", was and still is an important American document. In this article Turner discusses all aspects of the frontier, and what it means to many different types of people. He explains American development as the movement westward, and how we used, and what we did with the "free land" that was available beyond the frontier line. One of the main points that I extracted from this article is the fact that a distinguishing feature of Americans, is that we are always growing, expanding, and developing new things.

Turner speaks about the process of evolution that takes place in each settlement beyond the frontier line. He says that each new settlement begins as a primitive society, and gradually begins to develop into something more complex, and might eventually take on the complexity of a big city.

As the East coast of America was the frontier for Europe, Americans needed somewhere that they could consider their frontier. The West became that frontier, and to Americans it was their place to take hold of and develop communities based on American values and beliefs. The West was a place to get farther away from the influence of Europe on the East c

For most Americans the west was considered to be a test of their strength to survive. Since the west was thought to be a wild, uncivilized place, Americans believed that if they were able to survive out there, they would be able to survive almost any conditions or problems. Moving West was thought to be a great morale builder. Many people really believed that if they were to overcome the West, they would be powerful enough to do most things. Thus, the west was a place to prove oneself.

oast. The West is the best case of Americanization. "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 a 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. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. 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 completely American (Turner, 1154,155)."

In the beginning of the final paragraph of Turner's essay it states, "From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The works of travelers along each frontier from colonial day onward describe certain common traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded (Turner, 162)." Strength and inquisitiveness are two characteristics that I believe came directly from settling the West. The strength came from the travelers having to move right in into undeveloped land and do very hard labor in order to make the settlement look like a settlement. The inquisitiveness came from thinking how they would settle an area and with what materials. The settlers of the West needed to use these two characteristics almost everyday. These people were experiencing new things all the time, and they needed to know whether or not to utilize these new things and to what degree. In order to settle somewhere totally new, one needs to be able to picture in ones mind exactly what needs to be done, this is where the inquisitiveness jumps in. Having restless and nervous

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Approximate Word count = 1736
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History