Frontier

Frontier, in America the wilderness region marked by the farthest advance of white colonization. The most popular conception of the significance of the frontier is derived from F.J. Turner, although his theory has been attacked as “poetic,” contradictory, and oversimplified. He contended that “the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development….” This development is said to result from a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier, which is the meeting point of savagery and civilization. American democracy, according to Turner, came out of the American forest, whence it gained strength each time it touched a new frontier.
…To the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength, combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are the traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier.The frontier has helped to shape some distinctive aspects of American literature, affecting the ballad, the Tall tale, and the local‐color movement. It has less directly influenced American writing in so many ways as to defy concise summary. The physical frontier, which had a beginning at the Atlantic coast and moved westward until free land was exhausted (c. 1890), during its progression may be said to have had some influence on virtually every American author, and especially formed the attitude and manner of such writers as Crèvecoeur, William Byrd, Timothy Flint, Caroline Stansbury Kirkland, Irving, Cooper, Simms, Longstreet, Crockett, Edward Eggleston, Clemens, Harte, Joaquin Miller, Garland, Frank Norris, E.W. Howe, Rölvaag, Jack London, E.L. Masters, Sinclair Lewis, and Willa Cather. Successive frontiers likewise had their folk idols, among whom may be named Samuel Brady (Pennsylvania), Simon Kenton (Ohio), Lewis Wetzel (West Virginia), Davy Crockett (Tennessee and Texas), Sam Houston (Texas), Billy the Kid (New Mexico), Hugh Glass (Missouri), Kit Carson and Jim Bridger (the Great Plains), Wild Bill Hickok (Kansas), Daniel Boone (Kentucky), Mike Fink (the Mississippi River), and Paul Bunyan (the lumber frontier).