THE IMPACT OF THE WEST ON AMERICAN SOCIETY

The myths we now associate with the frontier began to be created as early as the 1870s in dime-store novels by Edward L. Wheeler and others. Wheeler’s story of Deadwood Dick: The Prince of the Road portrayed a Western America filled with gamblers, hard drinkers, and stagecoach robberies. The Wild West shows that began in 1883 and were promoted by Buffalo Rill Cody contributed to the myths begun by Wheeler: Spectators were shown log cabins, spectator rodeos, and mock battles between cavalrymen and seemingly deadly Indians.

A different view of the West was presented by Frederick Jackson Turner, an academic who in 1893 published his “frontier thesis.” The Turner Thesis states that as Americans moved westward they were forced to adapt and to innovate, and how western expansion had helped to ingrain these characteristics into the fabric of American society. Turner stated that their frontier had created a society of men and women who were committed to self-improvement, who supported democracy, and who were socially mobile. In short, the Turner Thesis maintains that much of the nature of America comes from our experiences in the West.

Each of these views is partially correct. The view of western expansion espoused (and later partially rejected) by Turner ignores the fact that not everyone who settled the West were white Easterners. In addition, the massacre of large numbers of Native Americans violates the basic principles of democracy. There is also some truth to Buffalo Bill’s view of western settlement, yet his view ignores the cultural and material progress that did take place in the West as a result of western expansion. In 1893 the Turner Thesis and Buffalo Bill’s shows both drew incredible interest. During that year it was clear that the Western frontier was for all practical purpose closed, and Americans were attempting to make sense of what that actually meant for the country. Historians today still revisit this question on a regular basis.