Frederick Jackson Turner’s Reliance on the Myth of an Unoccupied Americ

The Frontier Thesis has been very influential in peoples understanding of American set, government and culture until fairly recently. Frederick Jackson Turner outlines the frontier thesis in his essay The signification of the Frontier in American History. He argues that expansion of smart set at the frontier is what explains Americas individuality and ruggedness. Furthermore, he argues that the communitarian values experienced on the frontier carry over to Americas unique perspective on democracy. This idea has been pervasive in studies of American History until fairly recently when it has come under scrutiny for numerous reasons. In his essay The Trouble with Wilderness or, getting Back to the unseasonable Nature, William Cronon argues that many scholars, Turner included, fall victim to the false concept that a pristine, untouched wilderness existed before European intervention. Turners argument does indeed rely on the idea of pristine wilderness, oddly because he fa ils to notice the serious impact that Native Americans had on the beautify of the Americas before Europeans set foot in America. Turner fails to realize the tip to which Native Americans existed in the Wilderness of the Americas before the frontier began to advance. Turners thesis relies on the idea that easterners in moving to the wild insecure flat coats of the frontier, shed the trappings of civilization and by reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativeness that the source of American democracy and national character. (Cronon) While this idea seems give care a satisfying theory of why Americans are unique, it relies on the image that the Frontier was an area of free land, which is not the case, undermining the the... ...icans lived in and tamed the land around them millennia before European settlers arrived.Works CitedCronon, William The Trouble with Wilderness or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature ed., Uncommon Ground Rethinking the Human t aper in Nature, New York W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90Denevan, William M. The primordial Myth The Landscape of the Americas in 1492. The Pristine Myth The Landscape of the. Northern Arizona University, Web. 25 Mar. 2014. Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian Myth and History. New York W.W. Norton &, 1999. Print.Solnit, Rebecca. Spectators. Savage Dreams A Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West. San Francisco Sierra Club, 1994. 228-47. Print.Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of the Frontier in American History, Learner primary feather Sources. Annenberg Learner, Web. 25 Mar. 2014.