Frederick Jackson Turner: Closing Of The Frontier

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because of the profound influence of Native American Indian culture in the region.

Turner said that "the frontier divided the primitive from the civilized, the natural from the institutional, the savage from the cultured, the elemental from the complex." (Simonson, p.9) Though at first, the wilderness mastered the pioneer, the pioneer slowly transformed the wilderness. The pioneer underwent a process that "Americanized" him and freed him from his dependence on Europe. Subduing nature became the Americans' manifest destiny.

Turner said that the frontier was a process in which men confronted, then mastered their raw environment. First there were hunters, then fur traders, then cattlemen, then ranchers, then industrial workers. Each one has his own frontier - his own new and distinct set of obstacles to conquer.

Stripped of his accumulations of comfort, the settler is forced to become self-sufficient. He becomes a new man through this ritual of transformation. This ritual ...

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